HOLDING ON TO THE ROCKET SHIP by cherylmhealthmuse

Dedication This book is for my progeny. May you live with courage, gratitude, and love— Never fearing death, but always embracing life.

Table of Contents

Why am I writing this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Earliest Childhood Memories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Growing up in the Civil Rights Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Memorable Vacations from Childhood

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Grandparents, Roots, and the Quiet Ties That Bind . . . . . . . 33 Family Ancestry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 A Conversation with my Grandmother Dominica . . . . . . . . 45 How I Got My First Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Servite Seminary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 From Seminary to Marine Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Learning to Work with My Hands as an Electrician . . . . . . . 75 How I Chose Where to Go to College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Remembering Margie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Learning to Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 The history of the birth of my children On Making a Home

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Memories of my Mother Evelyn Gins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Memories of my Father Stanley Gins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 My Life with Cheryl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Table of Contents

Why Sedona Called Me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 My Progeny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Holiday Memories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 A Lifelong Journey Through Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Singing all my Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Family-Friendship and the Bonds of Brothers . . . . . . . . . 177 My Life with Cats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 My Spiritual Journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 My art and creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Thinking Outside the Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Places That Stayed with Me

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

Why I like math . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 How I learned to ride a bicycle

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

The Simple Pleasures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 The Games I have Loved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Advice for the Journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Talking About Glimmers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 My Belief in a Higher Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Friends in High School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Table of Contents

The Most Expensive Thing I Ever Bought . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 Healthy Advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 From Obsession to Passion

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Why am I writing this book

There are several reasons I decided to write this book. First and foremost, I needed a space to express my ideas and feelings to my family and friends — especially my grandchildren, with whom I’m separated by distance and circumstance. I never had the opportunity to connect deeply with my own grandparents as an older child or young adult. Because of that, I want to leave behind something more than just memories. I want to leave behind a legacy — a story that captures who I am, where I’ve been, and what I’ve learned. I hope this book serves as a kind of bridge, a means to share our thoughts, traditions, and energy across time and distance. I’ve come to realize that these stories — more than forty of them — are best suited to stand on their own. I plan to write several more books in the future, but these particular reflections belong

HOLDING ON TO THE ROCKET SHIP-JOHN GINS

together in this volume. Because my children and I no longer live in the same communities as our ancestors, we must find other ways to connect. I learned a great deal about Margie’s family by living with her parents for a year, just as I had learned from my own parents, especially my mother. But my father rarely shared much through

conversation,

and

that

silence

left

questions

unanswered. Now we have technology that, depending on how we use it, can either help or hinder communication. This book is my attempt to utilize that technology in a meaningful way — to establish a communication channel that might otherwise never exist. I’m very aware that after any of us passes on, our stories risk being forgotten. And I accept that. But I also believe in a different kind of legacy — one governed by what I call the law of conservation of information, a kind of spiritual physics. The legacy I hope to leave exists not just in words but in the energy frequencies that I live by: love, joy, gratitude, compassion, and enlightenment. Even though my ancestors are long gone, I still feel their influence. I have learned to work consciously with those ancestral

energies.

I know

they

still

offer

support

and

encouragement, and I believe those same frequencies will

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remain available to my descendants — even if they never read a word of what I’ve written. So in many ways, I’m writing this book for myself. To take a moment and express where I am now — spiritually, emotionally, creatively. And in doing so, I hope to free up the energy to write other books that are waiting within me. This collection contains over forty short stories, each about a thousand words long. Some of them came directly from my own reflections; questions from family, friends, or the Storyworth platform prompted others. I don’t expect them to be read in any particular order, so there may be some repetition here and there. That’s okay. Each story stands on its own. Throughout the writing process, I’ve encountered challenges — some personal, some practical. I’ve faced health issues and ongoing problems with our house in Rimrock. Yet I’ve approached these challenges with gratitude and humility, drawing on what I’ve learned from my practice of Tao and the Body & Brain movement. This summer marks the ninth anniversary of my involvement with the Tao Fellowship, and that journey has shaped many of the stories in this book. On the day of the Summer Solstice, I had a particularly vivid reminder of life’s unpredictability. I was outside when a rattlesnake appeared — though I didn’t see it at first. A worker at

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my house, James, pulled me back just in time. He calmly retrieved his snake hook from his truck and moved the rattlesnake off the property. Later, when we talked, he said he felt an adrenaline rush. I told him I felt calm—and deeply grateful. That moment, like many others, reminded me of the value of stillness and perspective. As for the mechanics of writing this book, it has been a learning process in itself. The first third of the book I typed manually, editing each chapter using Grammarly tools. That method worked well until June, when I hit a creative block, especially around writing the chapter about my father. I didn’t pick up the writing again until August. At that point, I began exploring voice-to-text tools — both on my computer and my phone — to expedite the process. Editing voice transcripts proved more difficult than I expected, and I stalled again. Then, just a few days ago, during the Autumn Equinox, I decided to try using ChatGPT to clean up my drafts. I ran the voice-generated chapters through the model, followed up with another Grammarly pass, and was surprised at how well the results turned out. It brought the writing back to life, in my voice, but clearer and more polished. Moving forward, I will continue to use this process to complete the rest of this book — a collaboration between spoken word, AI

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assistance, and careful human editing. A Final Note This book is not just a memoir. It is a frequency — a vibration I’ve sent out into the world, born from love, reflection, and the desire to connect. Whether you are a family member, friend, or curious stranger, I hope you find a part of yourself in these pages. And if you are my grandchild reading this many years from now, know this: I was thinking of you the whole time. Note About the title “Holding on to the Rocket Ship.” The 1960s turned many young minds toward outer space. This was the time of Ham, the monkey, and John Glen. Being a reader of science fiction and interested in the priesthood, I dreamed of being the first priest on the moon. I have grown, and now I am holding on to my own rocket ship, my imagination. Take flight with me as you read the following stories.

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Earliest Childhood Memories

A Childhood of Change and Discovery My earliest childhood memory is of walking with Aunt Stella through Battery Park in New York City, while she pushed a baby carriage that held my twin brothers, Patrick and Paul. At the time, we lived across the river in Jersey City, New Jersey, sharing a home with my paternal grandmother and aunt. It was just after World War II, a time when housing was scarce and families often had to double up.

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Stella, John, and Babchi I called my Polish grandmother Babci, and she called me Jasiu. Babci had a parakeet named Pretty Boy. While my memories of her apartment are foggy, I do recall the old-fashioned stove and the open floor plan. The toilet was shared down the hall, and I distinctly remember the water tank mounted high on the wall—you had to pull a chain to flush it.

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We lived on Van Winkle Avenue, a neighborhood of mixed apartments and businesses near Journal Square. The Catholic church was within walking distance, and the neighborhood was filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of both Polish and Italian cultures. I can still taste the Italian ices we bought on hot days. New Homes and Early Schooling My parents eventually moved us into GI housing on Newark Avenue, just before I started kindergarten. I remember one moment in particular: a bird flew down our chimney, and my mom chased it around with a broom, trying to get it out. I started kindergarten shortly after turning five and was chosen class valedictorian. I can still recall parts of the speech I memorized:

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Dad, Mom, John, Harriet, Babchi, Paul, and Pat “Welcome, Father Malone and Sister Mary Margaret…” The school was close enough to walk to. I remember the joy of being independent, but also the dangers. One of my classmates was killed by a car, and that incident stayed with me. I must have been holding in a lot of rage as a child—I once got in trouble for poking another student with a pencil and was punished for it.

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At home, discipline was strict. Like many parents of that era, my mother used corporal punishment. Her favorites were a paddle or her hand. Teachers used rulers. As I look back now, I realize that nearly every compliment I received from my mom came with some form of punishment. She had been partially raised in a convent school, and her approach to discipline reflected that. Carteret and Childhood Adventures Before second grade, we moved into our first house on Arthur Avenue in Carteret, New Jersey. The neighborhood was full of kids. Adult supervision was minimal; we were expected to look after one another. One summer day, fed up with watching over my twin brothers, I ran off and spent the day climbing around the train yard nearby. I returned home just before dark to find the police at our house. I was allowed to walk to school carrying a shiny new lunch box with a thermos of milk inside. But I didn’t make it far before dropping the lunch box and breaking the thermos. I still remember how devastated I felt. After my First Communion, my parents took me back to my old neighborhood on Newark Avenue. I visited the fire station and even got to sit in a fire truck.

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I attended a birthday party where we played the game “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.” The prize was a squirt gun with a backup water tank, and I wanted it badly. Before my turn, I studied where others had placed their tails and used that information to place mine correctly. I won—but felt guilty for years, thinking I had cheated. Transitions and Trials One Christmas, my parents bought me a bicycle, but it was adult-sized, and my legs barely reached the pedals. We moved to Chicago a few months later, and I didn’t see the bike again for two years. Our first parish in Carteret was the Servite parish, and one of the priests was Father Nick. He would later play a significant role in my life. We moved to Chicago in the spring of 1955, where we temporarily lived in a residential hotel. In the lobby was a coin-operated television, the first TV I ever saw. I had to finish third grade at a nearby school, and that transition proved to be life-changing. In my old school, we had only learned multiplication up to the number 5. In the new school, they had already finished multiplication and were starting division. I struggled mightily and rejected my parents’ attempts

HOLDING ON TO THE ROCKET SHIP-JOHN GINS

to help. I had to teach myself multiplication for numbers greater than 5. Subtraction methods also varied between schools, and I still remember two different techniques I was taught. To this day, I rely on calculators for important arithmetic. Family Growth and Rural Living While we lived in Father Nick’s parish, my sister Mary was born. That area, the East Side of Chicago, borders Indiana and sits just south of Lake Michigan. Around this time, I was given my first science fiction novel, “The Big Eye,” which planted the early seeds of curiosity and imagination. Afterward, we moved to Tinley Park, Illinois, an area then called Country Club Hills. On our first day in the new house, my brothers and I were goofing off on the beds when I put my feet on the wall. My mother broke her hand hitting me. We lived in a rural area, and it was there that I finally learned to ride my bike. My brothers and I became inseparable. We built a fort in the backyard and even witnessed a tornado, which thankfully veered away from our house.

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John, Paul, Mary, Pat, Dad, and Theresa Country Club Hills I became an altar server in seventh grade and attended my first school dance. Those were simpler, more grounded years. Eighth Grade and Spiritual Awakening Two years after we moved into this house, my father was transferred again, this time to Columbus, Ohio. I started eighth grade in public school before transferring to our parish school. That year marked a turning point for me. I rode my bicycle everywhere, often making weekly trips to the library to check out the maximum number of books. I discovered comic books around the same time.

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It was that fall that I first felt the calling to become a priest, specifically a Servite, influenced, no doubt, by Father Nick. This decision would prove pivotal. My pastor gave me real responsibilities. In the summers after eighth grade, I was chosen to read the First Reading at Mass, sometimes in front of hundreds of people. I did this every summer for the next four years. I also tried out for the basketball team in eighth grade. I did okay, but I wasn’t emotionally prepared to be around boys who were maturing faster than I was. Combined with some harsh remarks from my father, I decided never to pursue organized sports again. To this day, I have little interest in sports. Looking Back When I reflect on my early years, I see a child caught in a whirlwind

frequent moves,

strict discipline,

and

big

transitions — all while forming the roots of his curiosity, resilience, and spiritual path. There were joys: firetrucks, Italian ices, forts, and summer libraries. And there were pains: missed friendships, broken thermoses, punishments, and guilt. Yet all of it shaped me. It gave me a sense of independence, a desire to serve, and an inner strength that I carried into adulthood.

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Growing up in the Civil Rights Era

My understanding of the civil rights era didn’t arrive all at once. It unfolded slowly, across four decades—the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, and into the early 80s—more through lived experience than through formal instruction. Looking back, what strikes me most is not a single moment of awakening, but how long it took me to see clearly what was happening around me. One of my earliest memories comes from when I was about eight years old. My family attended an outdoor summer concert. I remember enjoying the music, the crowd, and the feeling of being out at night. What I did not understand at the time was that the entertainment included a minstrel show—white men performing in blackface. As a child, I had no framework for recognizing what that meant. Only years later did that memory return as a kind of shock. What once seemed normal turned out to be an insult embedded so deeply in the culture that no one

HOLDING ON TO THE ROCKET SHIP-JOHN GINS

around me thought to question it. I don’t believe my parents were overtly racist, though they carried the prejudices common to their time. Like many people of their generation, they had little experience living in mixed communities. With one exception—kindergarten—my schools were entirely white. Race wasn’t discussed in our household. There was no shared language for talking about people whose skin was darker than mine, no conversations about difference, history, or injustice. In that environment, I grew up what my son Eric would later jokingly call “blazingly white.” If that nickname had existed when I was young, it would have fit me perfectly. Ironically, I was teased at times anyway—people assumed I was Italian because of my last name, Gins. It wasn’t pleasant, but it didn’t shape me deeply. What it did not do was give me any insight into what it meant to be truly marginalized. Television entered our home around 1956. In black and white, we occasionally saw people of different ethnicities on screen, though rarely and often in limited roles. By high school, the language of equality and social justice was beginning to appear in classrooms, but it felt abstract. There was little in daily life that forced me to confront it directly. That changed when I entered the military.

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For the first time, I lived and worked alongside people from many racial backgrounds. The unit I served with was perhaps 60% white, with the remainder composed of men from different races and backgrounds. One of my earliest moments of discomfort came at boot camp, when drill instructors repeatedly referred to one recruit as “Jew.” I was deeply upset, believing they were mocking him for his religion. Only later did I learn that “Jew” was his last name, spelled J-U. My embarrassment was profound—but so was the lesson. I was beginning to realize how little I understood, and how quickly assumptions could mislead. In Vietnam, I encountered men whose intelligence and capability far exceeded the opportunities they had been given. One man I admired deeply was Black, had only a third-grade education, and yet was brilliant. He worked seamlessly with Vietnamese carpenters, solving problems that left others scratching their heads. What astonished me was not his race but the magnitude of what he had accomplished despite the barriers placed in his way. Ironically, it was back in the United States—on bases in North Carolina—where I witnessed the most open bigotry. Away from the structure and discipline of the military, prejudice surfaced more freely, more casually, and more cruelly.

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College brought some diversity, but still not much. It wasn’t until my first summer of work in Los Angeles, in 1969, that I encountered a truly different environment. I was installing burglar alarms in banks and vaults throughout South Central Los Angeles and East L.A., areas that were predominantly Black and Latino. The riots of 1968 were still fresh. We were careful—but my guiding principle was simple: be respectful first. That approach served me well. As the 1970s unfolded, civil rights laws were being passed, but practice lagged behind policy. Language was in flux. Words that were acceptable one year became offensive the next. There were moments when I genuinely didn’t know which term to use—colored, Negro, Black. The changes were rapid, and mistakes were easy to make. What struck me most was that prejudice didn’t disappear; it went underground. Opinions, when voiced at all, were whispered. The early 1980s were a turning point for me. I found myself working closely with predominantly Black Catholic churches in South Central Los Angeles. I was elected vice president of one of their committees—a role that allowed me to listen carefully to people’s concerns and try to convey them to those in authority. What angered me most was not the complaints themselves, but the dismissive attitude of the authority figures who heard them. That experience played a significant role in my eventual decision

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to step away from the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church. Through all of this, my understanding grew slowly, imperfectly. Assimilation, rather than revelation, defined my journey. The era I

grew

encouraged

silence.

The

era

live

now—2025—is almost the opposite. Voices are louder, conflicts more visible, and disagreements less likely to remain hidden. As a small sidebar to those years: in the 1970s, Margie worked in a building in Hollywood that also housed Motown Records. She rode the elevator with artists whose voices shaped an era. Through her, we began listening more closely to Motown music, and in those songs—full of longing, joy, resilience, and protest—I heard echoes of everything I had been slowly learning. My education in civil rights did not come from textbooks. It came from proximity, discomfort, listening, and time. I did not grow up enlightened. I grew up learning. And I am still learning. I was more affected by how women were treated in the workplace. The human tendency to judge people by their outward appearance disturbs me.

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Memorable Vacations from Childhood

The first journey etched in my memory took place when I was about six years old. We set out from New Jersey to visit my mother’s mother, a trip that would carry us across the country. Along the way, we stopped in Minnesota to see some of her relatives. There, I was introduced to an aunt—or perhaps a great-grandmother who had lived for a full century. To my young mind, meeting someone so old felt like brushing up against history itself. Our route took us through South Dakota, where an incident remains vivid in my mind. My mother was behind the wheel when we struck a cow that had wandered across the road. She was unhurt, and so was the animal, but she laughed later that the cow had given her a most reproachful look, as though we had been the ones in the wrong.

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John and Mom 1952 cross country trip Eventually, we arrived in Portland, Oregon, where we stayed with my grandmother, Aunt Elaine, and a host of other relatives, including my cousins Melissa and Susan. My Uncle Walter took me on a fishing trip on the Columbia River. The river had a strange, haunting quality; sounds echoed across its surface in ways that seemed almost otherworldly. I remember losing my hat to the wind that day, though I believe we did catch some fish. When our family later moved to Chicago, we often returned to Minnesota, most frequently to visit the Connors, who lived on a farm near Worthington. One particular year, we visited them three

times.

delighted

running

through

their

cornfields—first when the stalks barely reached my knees, and

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later in the season when they loomed far above my head. The Connors also had a pig, humorously named Pork Chop. I can still hear his squeals on the day he was castrated, a sound both unforgettable and unsettling to a child. After another move, this time to Ohio, my family rented an RV and set out on a journey around the northern shore of Lake Erie. What struck me most on that trip was the countless dead fish floating on the lake’s surface, a grim reminder of the damage humans can do to nature. From there, we crossed into Canada and visited family friends who lived along the Niagara River. The river fascinated me—its surface seemed calm, even ordinary, but beneath it I sensed an immense, concealed power. That journey ended with our first glimpse of Niagara Falls, which roared in all its grandeur, overwhelming and spectacular. Not all our trips were so grand. We often explored Ohio itself, sometimes with less success. On one occasion, my father insisted he knew the way to our destination and refused to heed my mother’s directions from the map. Hours later, thoroughly lost, he had to swallow his pride and ask for guidance at a gas station. The moment revealed both his stubbornness and, in hindsight, my mother’s quiet resilience, who endured his certainty with patience.

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The summer before I was to leave for the Servite Seminary, we learned of another boy from Ohio who would also be attending. His name was Pat Kent, from Chillicothe. I visited him that summer and watched as he demonstrated how to focus sunlight through a magnifying glass to burn ants, and how to set off firecrackers with practiced ease. Later, Pat and I became classmates, though I doubt he recalls that meeting. In high school, he carried himself with a calmness that suggested such childhood amusements had long since faded from his memory. One of the most poignant visits I remember is when my grandmother, Aunt Harriet, and Uncle Johnny drove from New Jersey to Columbus to see us. Uncle Johnny, thin as a rail, often joked about his wiry frame. His humor lingers in my memory, even though he passed away from cancer only a few years later. That visit, ordinary as it seemed at the time, became more precious in retrospect—one of those moments that grows sharper and more meaningful as the years pass. These memories of childhood journeys are less about the destinations than about the small, vivid details: a cow’s accusing stare, the eerie echoes of a river, the towering cornfields, and the quiet dignity of family members whose presence shaped my earliest memories.

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Grandparents, Roots, and the Quiet Ties That Bind

When I was born, only my grandmothers were present in my life. My parents had moved to California, where my mother’s mother, Luella, was living. They found a place in Eagle Rock, while Grandma Luella worked as a beautician and lived in a funeral home in the San Fernando Valley. I was born in a hospital in Van Nuys.

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Elaine, Luella, and Evelyn Shortly after my birth, my parents decided to move to Jersey City, New Jersey, where a job opportunity awaited my father. I was only a few months old. We initially lived with my Dad’s family — Dominica, my grandmother, whom I called Babci, and my teenage Aunt Stella. Even after my parents found their own place nearby, I spent a lot of time with Babci and Stella. I have vivid memories of their apartment: the wood- or coal-burning stove, the communal water closet in the hallway with its high-mounted tank and wooden toilet seat, and the spacious open layout. Babci had a parakeet named Pretty Boy, and I always felt very safe there.

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When I was about six or seven, my parents drove us to Portland, Oregon, to visit my Mom’s mother. What stands out from that trip is fishing with my Uncle Walter on the Columbia River. I remember losing my hat, and the sound—the echoing of voices across the water—remains vivid in my memory even today. My Mom’s father, Fred Wallman, had never been a part of her life. She didn’t meet him until I was around eight or nine years old. I remember visiting him at his job as a state automobile inspector in New Jersey. I was fascinated by the equipment they used to align car headlights — how mechanical precision could guide light. I met many of my Dad’s relatives while we lived in New Jersey. One visit stands out — to relatives living in Secaucus, a town then known for its pig farms. I was told the smell came from the swamps, but later learned the truth while researching how to spell “Secaucus.” My Mom had an Aunt Rose who lived just a few hours away. After we moved to Chicago when I was around eight or nine, we would often visit my cousins, the Connors, who had a farm near Worthington, Minnesota. I remember the towering cornfields and a pet pig named Pork Chop. I even met a great-grandmother who was over 100 years old. Later, I learned the Connors family could trace their ancestry to an Irish veteran of the American

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Revolutionary War. My Mom’s mother died not long after that visit to Portland. My Dad’s mother passed in 1964. Family in California Some of my most treasured family memories are from the 1960s and the thirty years that followed — centered around those who lived in California. In 1965, at the age of 18, I met my first cousins, Melisa and Susan, the daughters of my Mom’s sister, Elaine. Susan was a year older than I, and Melisa was a year younger. I saw them again just before I was sent to Vietnam. In 1969, when I returned and spent the summer with Margie in Los Angeles, we went with Melisa to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl — sitting way up in the nosebleeds. In 1973, Margie and I moved to Los Angeles permanently. We spent many holidays and family events with Elaine and her husband, Buzz. They were important to our lives in California, providing a sense of continuity and connection. Two of my Dad’s cousins, Mary and Frances, lived in Fullerton, and their sister Laura lived in Anaheim. Through them, we learned a great deal about Polish food and traditions — including pierogies, kielbasa, and the joy of shared meals at the table.

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Aunts, Uncles, and Stories from the Past My Dad’s sisters were Harriet and Stella. Harriet was his older sister. My memories of her are brief but warm. She had a long-term relationship with Johnny, who had a large dog. I remember attending their wedding, and I recall her visiting Margie and me in Brentwood in 1978. Her daughter Adrien still stays in contact with me. Stella, on the other hand, was a larger-than-life personality — charming, dramatic, and deeply lovable. She had a mercurial nature, but her presence was unforgettable. I wasn’t allowed to attend her wedding because I had chickenpox, but I visited her and her husband, Matty, in Jersey City after I returned from Vietnam. They hosted me during a brief but memorable stop on my travels. Stella and Matty attended our wedding in Ohio, and although most of our conversations took place by phone, I always cherished her energy. Later, Cheryl and I — and then Eric and I — visited her in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey. Reflections on Family and Distance I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be connected to family — especially when we’re separated by geography and time.

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In earlier generations, extended families often lived close together, sometimes in the same town or even the same home. That changed with the Industrial Revolution, and especially in post-war America. Families are dispersed for work, education, and opportunity. As a result, maintaining meaningful relationships with extended family became increasingly difficult. I once remarked that for some of my in-laws, I only saw them for a few hours a year, which meant it would take 30 years to build a full picture of who they really were. Some parents feel obligated to live near their children or grandchildren. But I never experienced that model growing up, and I don’t think my parents did either. For me, family connection is not necessarily about physical proximity; it’s about an energetic connection. I hope my children and grandchildren can understand this perspective. I may not live around the corner, but I feel deeply connected to you. At a soul level, I carry profound respect, gratitude, compassion, and love for each of you. I feel honored to witness your journeys — to cheer from afar, to share stories when invited, and to pass along what experience and wisdom I’ve

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gained. Closing Thoughts Ancestry is more than names on a tree. It’s stories. It is the odors. It’s the echo of voices across a river. It’s a wood stove, a parakeet, a swamp in Secaucus. It’s a pig named Pork Chop. It’s a cousin in the nosebleed section of the Hollywood Bowl. It’s an aunt who a room couldn’t contain. These memories have shaped me. And in writing them down, I offer them back to my family, to my descendants, and to anyone wondering what it means to belong, even across distance and time.

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Family Ancestry

I can trace eight generations of my ancestors. Father Stanley Gins B 3/26/1921 D 5/1/2005 Grand Father Adolph Joseph Gins B 10/13/1884 D 1/16/1944 Grand Mother Dominika (Grzybowski) Gins B 6/5/1894 D 5/23/1964 Great Grandfather Kleofas Gins Great Grand Mother Ludwika (Dudowska) Gins Great Grandfather Stanislaw Grybowski Great Grand Mother Mary (Sobolewski) Grzybowski Mother Evelyn Elizabeth (Wallman) Gins B 8/17/1920 D 1/21/2004 Grandfather Fredrick Wallman

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Grandmother Luella (Short) Wallman B 1890 D October 1952 Great Grandfather Edward Theodore Short B 10/30/1864 D Feb 1928 Great Grandmother Catherine Elizabeth (Connor) Short B 9/7/1870 D 4/5/1911 Great Great Grandfather John Short Great Great Grandmother Mary Ann Connor Gr Gr Great Grand Father Timothy Malchious Connor B 12/30/1826 D 9/7/1899 Gr Gr Great Grand Mother Agatha L. (Michard) Connor B 1/22/1859 D 7/6/1925 Gr Gr Gr Great Grandfather Denis Connor B 1785 D 1/22/1851 Gr Gr Gr Great Grand Mother Mary Magdalene (Kuhn) Connor B 4/25/1809 D 1/22/ 1851 Gr Gr Gr Gr Great Grandfather Tim Connor B 1751 D 8/29/1815 My ancestors came from Eastern and Western Europe, according to blood tests. My sister Theresa has a more researched chronology of our ancestry. I want to discuss what our ancestors have done for us and what we can do for them. A familial energy exists between living

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family members and those who have passed away. According to physics, energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed. Therefore, all of the energy in the universe is all around us and always with us. Some of that is in the DNA passed from generation to generation. The information from prior generations is encoded in our DNA, but is also present in other ways. I have participated in ceremonies that allow me to have limited conversations with my ancestors. Sometimes, these conversations are in my mind’s eye, while others are in my mind’s ear. I have been actively participating in this event annually

since

2019.

generally

receive

the

sense

communication rather than specific words. I remember that my mother told jokes during one ceremony, and I was rolling on the floor laughing. I do not remember the specific jokes, however. What my ancestors receive from me is spiritual energy as well as gratitude. Trust me, I am not hallucinating during these ceremonies, but I do prepare with physical, meditation, and energy work before, during, and after these ceremonies. These communications have been supportive. Part of my preparation for these ceremonies involves expressing gratitude to my ancestors. Frankly, without them, I would not be here. These ceremonies are part of the Korean Tao practice I have followed since 2016. The Tao Fellowship at Sedona Mago Retreat Center will conduct this

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ceremony for me after I die. There have been other times outside these ceremonies where I have also received communications. These are usually in the form of protection. I mentioned that my grandmother was like a guardian angel when I was in Vietnam. Several years ago, I decided to find out the meaning of my name, Gins. I found that in Lithuanian Gins translates to Will Defend. When I had my DNA analyzed by 23andMe, it showed that my ancestors had lived in Lithuania in the 17th century. As a boy, my father met his grandfather returning from a trip to Lithuania.

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A Conversation with my Grandmother Dominica

In my final year at the Servite Seminary, several things happened at once—too many things, really, for a young man to hold easily. In May of 1964, my grandmother Dominica—my father’s mother, whom we called Babci—died. My parents did not tell my brothers or me at the time. Within weeks of her death, I was also told that I would not be allowed to continue studying to be a priest with the Servite community. My future collapsed and reshaped itself almost overnight. My parents came for our graduation to take my brothers and me back to Columbus. Only after the ceremony—after the mass, after the public celebration—did they tell us that Babci had died. I was devastated.

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I would have wanted to attend her funeral, even in the middle of everything else that was happening in my life. I wanted to say goodbye. I wanted closure. Instead, that door was closed quietly, without my consent. I was angry about it for a long time. Grief deferred does not disappear; it waits. It was then that I learned something I had not known before: Dominica had been a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis and was buried in a Franciscan habit. That detail mattered to me. It hinted at a depth of faith and commitment that resonated with my own spiritual journey, even as that journey was being abruptly redirected. Years later—much later—I came to understand something else. I came to believe that Dominica was my guardian angel during my time in Vietnam.

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At an orphanage in Danang I survived twenty-five months there without significant physical injury. I do believe that my later bout with prostate cancer was caused by the spraying I witnessed in Vietnam, but during the war itself, I was spared. Looking back, I feel her presence most strongly in that time—quiet, steady, protective. I now mark this chapter as a conversation with her.

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Each year, as part of my Taoist practice, I participate in an annual gratitude ceremony honoring ancestors who have gone before me. Dominica is there. So is my mother, Evelyn. Margie is also there. So are generations who passed into eternal life long before I was born. For the past seven years, I have taken that ritual seriously. At first, my mother’s presence dominated those conversations. In the last two years, the experience has changed. The voices feel calmer, more blended. No one voice speaks louder than another. Two weeks ago, the ceremony was especially gentle. I asked only for support—support for my health, and for clarity in following my purpose in life: to communicate compassion in as many ways as I can. And so, Babci, this is what I would say to you. I miss you. I wish I could have been there to say goodbye. When everything at the seminary fell apart—when my plan for priesthood was taken from me, when I chose the Marine Corps instead, when Vietnam became my life—I wasn’t in a place where I could reach for you. I stayed positive as long as I could. It wasn’t until about twenty months in, after returning to Da Nang from leave in the United States, that depression found me. Then the rocket attacks increased. I was very glad to leave Da Nang three weeks earlier than expected.

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Now I realize you were there. You helped me stay responsible—to myself, to my work, to the people around me. You helped me do what needed to be done. I’m grateful for that. Working with refugees as a chaplain’s assistant was meaningful. Some of the other tasks were frightening, but necessary. I’m grateful I never had to fire my rifle outside the rifle range. I learned about other religions. I learned I could meet people of different beliefs with respect and openness. I was astonished by how many forms Catholicism could take—and grateful that what I had learned in seminary emphasized social justice. After I returned to the States, I felt your presence less. I think it was time for you to move on to other work. I understand that now. When I later reflected on Vietnam and realized you had been my guardian angel, I was able to celebrate that truth. I made sure you were included in the conversations I’ve had about ancestors over the years. You raised two wonderful daughters and a wonderful son. I’m sorry I never met your husband, Adolf. I know my father was deeply saddened that he couldn’t return from World War II to be with

you

when

Adolf

died.

remember

stories—how sudden it was, how unexpected.

Aunt

Stella’s

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By the time I knew you, you had figured out how to survive. You supported yourself and your daughters. You opened your apartment—and your heart—to my mother, my father, and me when we were finding our footing in New Jersey. I remember the sounds of the street on Van Winkle Avenue. I remember the shared commode down the hall, with its tank high near the ceiling. I remember your parakeet, Pretty Boy. I often wondered what became of him after we moved away. I remember your visits. I’m glad you met my sisters. I carry sweet memories of you. I’m grateful you were my grandmother. I’m grateful you were my guardian angel. And now, through these stories, you live on for your great-grandchildren. I knew I wanted to talk with you. I just hadn’t known when or how. It was Amy—whom you would have adored—who asked me whom I would choose to speak with from my past if I could. So I thank her for that nudge. I hope the young ones in our family understand this: just because someone has passed into another plane of existence does not mean they are absent. Love does not stop at death. Guidance does not vanish.

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Thank you. Loves and kisses to all my ancestors, relatives, and friends who have gone before me. And please—give Margie, Patrick, and Aggie an extra-special hug.

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How I Got My First Job

How I Got My First Job I have always felt that I had more than one “first job.” The very first was when I was thirteen years old — my first paid job. I had already applied to attend seminary, and my pastor suggested I work for him during the summers, painting the school’s classrooms. So that summer, I painted walls: concrete, plain, and sun-baked. It was honest work, and I learned more than how to hold a brush. The school caretaker, who had once been a musician, shared stories and bits of wisdom while we worked. With my mother’s help, I opened my first savings account and put my wages away for some future day. The work was satisfying — enough so that I later helped paint my parents’ basement with the confidence of someone who knew what they were doing. My second “first job” came years later — my first professional position. By then, a great deal had happened in between. I had earned my master’s degree in mathematics at Wright State.

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Margie had already secured a teaching position with the Los Angeles Unified School District, and we knew we were moving to California. I was heading to a city where I knew almost no one, unsure where to begin looking for work in statistics. What I did know was that professional associations could help. So,

before

graduating,

joined

the

American

Statistical

Association. My plan was simple: find the local chapter in Los Angeles, make contacts, and see what might happen. Within our first month in California, the local chapter held a social meeting at a restaurant. I went, hoping to meet someone who could point me in the right direction. At dinner, I spoke with several people, asking what they did and listening for any hint of a job. Nothing obvious appeared. As the evening ended, the man who had invited me said, almost casually, “Oh, I wanted to introduce you to Dennis Bregman.” What I hadn’t realized was that Dennis had been sitting next to me the whole meal. I had barely said two words to him. As it turned out, he needed someone to take over his job as an epidemiology analyst for Los Angeles County. We talked, and he explained the immunization model he had been using for several years. We arranged an interview with his boss within a day or two.

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Before that interview, I worked through the model Dennis had described. Something bothered me. I realized they were not using a statistical distribution that fit their data well, especially the error term. A different underlying distribution could improve the accuracy. So, at the interview, I explained how I would modify the model. I was hired almost immediately. I think it helped that I showed initiative and was older than the typical recent graduate. The Marine Corps had shaped me. I had experience with real-world problem-solving. I wasn’t just academic theory. I soon revised the model, compared results, and improved accuracy — maybe by ten or twenty percent. After that, I worked on the immunization survey and several other projects. That job eventually led me to the Air Pollution Control District. One opportunity flowed into the next. The pattern was clear: prepare, show up, talk to people, and connections will form. After that, almost every job I ever had came through contact and reputation. I never used a headhunter. The only time I was not formally employed was when a future employer told me to take a week off before starting. It was the most gracious unemployment I’ve ever heard of. What I learned is that the best preparation for a job is not just technical knowledge — it is learning how to talk to people. You

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have to translate what you know into their language. That, in the end, became my purpose in statistics and computing. When I entered the workforce in the 1970s, most of the managers were World War II veterans. They had learned by doing.

Some

had

college

degrees,

but

many

were

“seat-of-the-pants” experts. What they respected was not pedigree but attitude — the willingness to work hard and figure things out. I found that if I avoided the “ivory tower” posture of higher education and showed curiosity and persistence, they listened. Over time, I learned to adjust my vocabulary. Many of my peers were highly educated, but the job still required translating complexity into clarity. I also enjoyed tackling what others thought impossible. Once, while working for a database company, I volunteered to debug a Japanese version of the software — even though I knew no Japanese. I found the programming errors and demonstrated them to the team, much to their surprise. It remains one of the accomplishments I am most proud of. The job market today is very different. Many tasks seem suited for learning algorithms. But algorithms can only replicate what they have been trained on. Human experience is broader. A person with curiosity and wide expertise can sometimes see

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solutions that a machine would never consider. Looking back, I see a pattern in all of this: Prepare. Show up. Talk to people. Be willing to try. Every opportunity in my career grew from that simple approach.

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Servite Seminary

A Path of Faith, Growth, and Redirection My high school years were spent at Servite Seminary in Hillside, Illinois, a minor seminary dedicated to training Catholic boys who felt called to the priesthood. I entered as a freshman with a class of 35 students, and like many programs of its kind, the numbers fluctuated over the years. By the time we graduated in 1964, there were 19 of us—a mix of students preparing for the Servite Order, Glenmary Home Missionaries, and the Diocese of Joliet. Three of my classmates went on to be ordained as priests. Only three from our graduating class have passed away.

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Servite Seminary is now Hillside, IL Civic Center Freshman Year: A Tough Start Freshman year was difficult. I was one of the youngest students, and adjusting to life in a dormitory with a rigid schedule took its toll. I was also still struggling with anger issues, which made things even harder. It was a time of emotional and spiritual testing. Academically, I can’t say I had a favorite subject that year, though I enjoyed the library, choir, speech, and art. I found some solace in games—I was usually good at chess and could hold my own at pool and shuffleboard.

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As the school year drew to a close, I seriously considered leaving the seminary. But then, something happened that changed everything: I experienced a vision. In the chapel, above the altar, I saw a multidimensional jewel—a floating gem unlike anything I’d ever seen. In that moment, I was certain I was being given a sign. I believed I was meant to stay. Sophomore Year: Discovery and Growth When I returned for my sophomore year, most of the teaching staff had changed. Only one priest remained from my freshman year, and all the lay teachers stayed. This new mix of instructors made a difference. I discovered that I was good at geometry—my first real academic strength in math. I even used those skills to lay out a race track for track and field, earning praise from the P.E. coach. That year also brought new classmates from the Glenmary and Joliet programs. I enjoyed getting to know them and found the overall experience much more positive. Junior Year: Family Joins and New Challenges My junior year was marked by new arrivals—my twin brothers, Patrick and Paul, joined the school as freshmen. A student from

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Yugoslavia also transferred in as a senior and convinced the school to introduce soccer. I became a referee, stepping into a new role that brought responsibility and fun. Academically, I initially performed well in advanced algebra. But I was eventually forced to drop the class mid-year due to struggles in my other subjects. The silver lining? I had more time to spend in the library, which I loved. I had to retake French in summer school to improve my grades. Despite my academic ups and downs, I was awarded a mathematics contest medal, even though I wasn’t enrolled in a math class at the time. Senior Year: Scientific Curiosity and Spiritual Crisis Senior year was both a highlight and a heartbreak. One of the most rewarding parts of that year was being placed in charge of the science lab. I was able to explore real-world applications of scientific thinking. One memorable project involved building a Tic-Tac-Toe computer—a mechanical device that couldn’t lose. This sparked my interest in studying chemistry in college. I particularly enjoyed chemistry and English, and I had begun to envision a future where science and faith might intersect.

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As part of our final preparation for the novitiate, Servite students were given a series of psychological tests. Just a few weeks before graduation, I was told that I would not be accepted to continue my training for the priesthood. The explanation? “You would make a better scientist than a priest.” I was devastated. I hadn’t applied to college because I had assumed I would enter the Servite Novitiate. I focused on finishing strong, doing my best to graduate with a B average. Then came a second blow: after graduation, my parents told me that my grandmother had passed away—a month earlier. They hadn’t told me while I was still in school, and this loss, compounded with the rejection from the seminary, left me deeply shaken. Turning Point: Choosing a New Path I went home with no clear direction for the first time in years. I applied to Ohio State, but they offered me only probationary admission, which felt like another rejection. In late July of 1964, while riding in the car with my parents, I heard the Commandant of the Marine Corps on the radio. He was talking about a new program to train recruits in electronics. That struck a chord with me.

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I conducted my research and convinced my parents to sign the enlistment waiver, despite still being under 18. I joined the United States Marine Corps for four years of active duty, just before the Tonkin Gulf Incident marked the beginning of the Vietnam War. Reflections on the Seminary Experience Despite the pain of how it ended, my time at Servite Seminary profoundly shaped me. It gave me space to grow up outside my family home, which I badly needed. I met men—teachers and classmates—who became role models. I received a well-rounded classical education. I learned discipline, independence, and the early tools of discernment. I discovered that I could challenge myself and remain true to who I was, even in a system that sometimes demanded conformity. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn how to relate effectively in a mixed-gender environment. I remained a solitary person, with a few close friendships, none of them in my graduating class. Social development would come later in life.

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For years, I remained interested in the priesthood. Only later did I come to understand that the Servites’ decision not to accept me was, in many ways, the right one. I later learned that their community often rejected talented candidates because they doubted whether they could meet their individual needs. Still, I remained connected to the Servite community, and my brother, Paul, became a Servite priest. I take comfort in that continuity and have come to accept that my path was meant to diverge—that the rejection I experienced was actually a redirection toward the life I was meant to live.

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From Seminary to Marine Corps

A Journey of Service and Growth In the summer of 1964, I realized that going straight to college after high school wasn’t an option for me. I enlisted in the Marine Corps for a four-year term, signing up just one day before the Tonkin Gulf Incident in Vietnam. My boot camp began that September at Parris Island, South Carolina. People often ask how I transitioned from studying to become a priest to enduring the rigors of Marine boot camp. Surprisingly, I see many similarities. In both, you follow a strict schedule, obey superiors, wear a uniform without choice, maintain strict cleanliness, eat the food served, and complete assigned tasks. The main difference lies in the subject matter and the physical demands. Interestingly, I didn’t feel homesick.

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My motivation was simple: serve my country in the way it needed, and save money for university. Physically, boot camp was the biggest challenge. I had to build upper body strength and learn to swim—skills I developed with guidance and support. Academically, I excelled, which helped boost my platoon’s morale. I was determined to succeed. After boot camp, we had a Christmas break before infantry training at Camp Geiger, North Carolina. There, I learned to use explosives, firearms, grenades, and tear gas. One lesson that stuck with me is that military training often prepares you for the last war—in my case, the Korean War. I was then assigned to an engineering battalion at Camp Lejeune, where I trained as an electrician—learning to wire, climb poles, and run electrical systems. Soon, I was ordered to the Marine Air Wing in Japan. Before deploying, I took a month’s leave to visit family in Ohio and Illinois, as well as old classmates and relatives in California. My voyage to Japan aboard the troop ship General William Mitchell was a memorable experience—hammock bunks stacked four high, long lines for chow and the “head” (bathroom), and nights spent watching flying fish. Just before landing in Hawaii, I was rerouted to Okinawa.

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In Okinawa, I stored my civilian gear and prepared to join my unit in Da Nang, South Vietnam. We flew in tightly strapped to a C-130, landing to join the 1st Marine Air Wing’s Utilities unit. I arrived in July 1965, just after a beach landing, and before the onset of monsoon season. Our task was urgent: repair and build facilities on an old French compound before the rains came. Though we rarely faced direct combat, there was a close call when a grenade was thrown over the fence. I only fired my rifle for sighting adjustments. Much of my time was spent wiring buildings, running generators, and laying cement at night due to the heat. The monsoon rains brought electrical challenges. I recall an incident where water caused generator surges; fixing it required climbing and removing the electrical tape that had loosened. Christmas 1965 was supposed to be special with Cardinal Spellman celebrating Mass, but I was assigned 24-hour duty at midnight. That night, a plane crashed into a village nearby, and I spent hours searching for victims. Though I found none, the crash claimed 125 lives—a grim reminder of the war’s toll. After six months, I was eligible for rest and relaxation, but was assigned night guard duty instead. This allowed me to attend daily Mass, where the chaplain offered me the role of Chaplain’s

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Assistant and bodyguard—a role I gladly accepted. Traveling throughout the Danang area and even to the Valley Forge helicopter carrier, I extended my tour by six months. On one trip, I observed planes spraying chemicals—later known as Agent Orange. When Chaplain Paul Hammeral took over, my duties changed. He worked closely with Vietnamese Catholic refugees, giving me a chance to serve and witness their resilience. During this time, I worked alongside George Boose from Arizona. A colonel with a PhD in Mathematics taught me College Algebra in his office after other students dropped out. His mentorship shaped my future career as an applied mathematician. The war’s violence hit close when conflict broke out between South Vietnamese forces nearby. Bullets flew into our base, and casualties appeared in the streets. One chaplain assistant was wounded but survived. Marines eventually took control of the area. Through meetings and observations, I learned that the Vietnam conflict had strategic and economic reasons beyond the public narrative: preventing the spread of communism, securing Cam Ranh Bay, and tapping potential offshore oil reserves.

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After Chaplain Hammeral’s transfer, I rejoined my electrical team. The focus shifted from construction to maintenance, since the SeaBees extensively rewired the base. One regret was my infrequent communication with my mother. She enlisted others to encourage me to write. I sent her thousands of pictures and slides, and she supported troops back home, even writing a book on sending care packages. After 30 days leave stateside, including stops in Alaska and visits with family and local officials, I returned to Danang in a difficult mental state. Rocket attacks intensified. One night, a rocket hit a nearby ammo dump, showering our bunker with shrapnel. A fellow Marine was injured when he left the bunker. A month later, I was ordered home early. The flight home was bittersweet—military personnel on commercial flights avoided wearing uniforms, reflecting a changing public perception. Back in North Carolina, I enrolled in classes and worked on experimental airport lighting at a small base where I had to watch for hunters in the woods. I applied and was accepted to the University of Dayton, securing an early release from active duty in August 1968. Reflecting on my service:

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Many soldiers use the term “When I get back to the real world.” To discuss how they will act differently after the war. I always said, “This is the real world.” Education

doesn’t

guarantee

intelligence;

sometimes

the

opposite is true. In a new environment where no one knows you, you can redefine yourself. My grandmother, who passed before I enlisted, was my guardian angel in Vietnam. Mistakes and owning responsibility are vital to growth. I extended my Vietnam tour twice because I believed it was prudent and likely to be beneficial. Anyone considering the military should understand what to expect and have a clear purpose. I’ve met veterans who served in places like Germany during Vietnam—the truth is, they served where the government assigned them. Some veterans avoid discussing their service. I was reluctant for years, but now I have come to embrace the wisdom gained and empathize with others.

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1966 John White Elephant Pier Danang

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Learning to Work with My Hands as an Electrician

The idea of becoming an electrician entered my life almost by accident. I was riding in the car with my parents when a radio announcement about the Marine Corps came on. The Marine Commandant was describing the kinds of skills they were looking for in recruits—people with experience or aptitude in electronics and electrical communication. That caught my attention immediately. I had always been drawn to science, and the idea of learning a practical skill grounded in physics appealed to me. Somewhere on that car ride, I decided that joining the Marine Corps made sense. At boot camp, we were given a battery of tests. On one of them, I missed

only

single

point.

The

result

surprised

everyone—especially the drill instructors. I wasn’t the strongest

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or the fastest recruit, but my test scores mattered. They understood that the Corps needed people who could think as well as march, and that awareness bought me a certain amount of patience as I worked through the physical demands of training. When it came time to choose my Military Occupational Specialty, I was assigned to an engineering battalion. Those units do everything: construction, bridge building, vehicle maintenance, and logistical support for combat units. I was given a choice between an electrician and another related specialty, which I no longer remember. I chose an electrician without hesitation. I spent about six weeks in training. We climbed poles, learned to wire new construction, repair damaged systems, and work safely under less-than-ideal conditions. It was hands-on work, and I took to it immediately. Electricity made sense to me—I already understood the physics behind it—so the practical application felt natural rather than intimidating. I was eventually assigned to a Marine air wing in Japan, not realizing that Vietnam lay ahead. Once deployed, I found there was no shortage of work. We poured concrete pads for buildings, wired structures from scratch, and repaired whatever broke under heat, rain, and constant use. As a Private First Class, I didn’t have much authority to offer design suggestions, even when I could see better ways to route wiring or avoid future

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problems. I stored those observations away, learning by watching.

Maintain Electrical Generators For a year, I stepped away from electrical work to serve as a chaplain’s assistant. When I returned, the electrical shop had changed. The Navy’s Construction Battalions—the Seabees—had rewired much of the base while I was gone. Our work shifted from building systems to maintaining them. Before that rewiring, my job had been to make sense of what earlier units had left behind. Vietnam introduced problems I had never encountered before: relentless rain, water infiltration, and unfamiliar fusing systems that looked like solder but weren’t. Every mistake became a lesson. Every fix deepened my

HOLDING ON TO THE ROCKET SHIP-JOHN GINS

understanding. After the Seabees’ work, maintenance involved convincing officers that fluorescent lights do not behave like incandescent ones—that they take time to warm up. I was repeatedly surprised

how

many

college-educated

officers

didn’t

understand that simple fact. There were hazards. I once nearly electrocuted myself repairing a motor after a truck tore it loose—I hadn’t checked to see if the power had been cut. Just before leaving Vietnam, I sliced my hand during another repair. When I returned to Columbus, my doctor was delighted to remove the stitches from a “war veteran,” even if I wasn’t eligible for any medals. It was workman’s damage, not heroics. Back in the States, my electrical work continued. I was assigned to an experimental airfield lighting project at Bogue Field. The system was designed for temporary combat runways—lights wired in series but engineered so that if one burned out, the others stayed lit. It was clever, elegant engineering. A truck could still sever the whole line, of course. There are always trade-offs. I worked closely with civilian contractors and realized something important. If I ever stayed connected to the military long-term, I would rather do so as a civilian contractor than in uniform. That insight nudged me, quietly, toward college.

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After my first year of college, I spent the summer with Margie’s family. My future father-in-law was thrilled that I had been an electrician. Through him, I got a job installing burglar alarms in banks and vaults around Los Angeles. I also helped at his house—installing

air

conditioner

and

handling

other

electrical repairs. The skill stayed with me. Throughout my life, I’ve never been afraid of electrical maintenance. I joke that I can walk into a room and visually inspect the outlets to see if they’re wired correctly. When Amy moved into her current house, I installed childproof sockets throughout. When we moved to Sedona and later to Rimrock, I tackled lighting problems, replaced switches with built-in nightlights, and added solar power where possible. Not everything yielded to experience. Electrical codes and practices changed over the years, sometimes not for the better. In our home on Southview, a long-standing electrical issue turned out not to be the panel—as I’d feared—but a loose wire from the pole that hadn’t been properly secured during remodeling.

Rimrock,

finally

had

admit

that

air-conditioning repair was beyond my reach and that I need to call in a professional. Learning where your limits are is also part of learning a trade.

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Perhaps the most lasting impact of being an electrician wasn’t technical at all. It taught me how to talk with people who work with their hands. I understand their processes, timelines, and how unexpected problems stretch a job. I know when to ask questions and when to step back. That mutual respect has mattered—especially when we had major work done on our well system. I’m convinced it improved both communication and outcomes. Until Amy asked me this question, I hadn’t given much thought to how formative that work was. Being an electrician taught me how systems really function, how theory meets reality, and how respect is built through shared understanding. It shaped not just what I could fix—but how I learned to listen, observe, and engage with the world. My father’s job in the Marine Corps during World War II was also as an electrician.

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How I Chose Where to Go to College

I always knew I would go to college. When I was in high school, I imagined majoring in chemistry, but life had other plans. My path took a sharp turn, and before I ever set foot on a college campus, I spent four years in the Marine Corps. Even there, the pull of learning found me. In Vietnam, I took a college algebra course taught by a man who ran a missile battalion by day and held a PhD in mathematics. It ended up being a private tutorial — just him and me — and through our conversations, I discovered what I really wanted to do: become an applied statistician. It was the first clear academic direction I had ever felt, and it surprised me with its certainty. On one of my trips home from Vietnam, I met a priest from the Society of Mary. I told him I still felt drawn to becoming a priest. He explained that their order only accepted applicants after they

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had earned a bachelor’s degree and that they ran two universities: one in Hawaii and one in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton caught my attention. It was close to Columbus, where my family lived, but not too close — just far enough to allow independence. In those days, before the interstate system reached everywhere, the sixty or seventy miles between the two cities felt like a much greater distance. I began researching the University of Dayton and decided it was the right fit for me. While stationed at Cherry Point in North Carolina, I even began taking freshman English to get a head start. Then my acceptance letter arrived. The University of Dayton began classes at the end of August 1968, and though I was three weeks short of completing my four-year Marine enlistment, the Corps released me early so I could begin my education. A Campus That Changed My Life The decision to attend Dayton shaped everything that followed. I met Margie in my very first freshman class. That alone would have been enough to justify the choice, but the education itself changed me, too. I switched from a mathematics arts major to a mathematics science major. I was drawn in equal measure to English and philosophy, so much so that I ended up minoring in both — an unusual pairing for a math science student. Those

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fields broadened me. They taught me to think across boundaries and turned me into a generalist rather than someone defined purely by numbers or ideas.

1969 John and Margie Dayton Halfway through my undergraduate years, I refined my goals further: I wanted to be a mathematical statistician, not a pure mathematician. Once again, the path was becoming clearer.

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I graduated ten months ahead of my class in the summer of 1971. During my final semester, I received a phone call that altered the course of my life yet again. Dr. Carl Minary from Wright State University asked whether I would consider serving as a teaching assistant while earning my master’s degree in mathematics. I had planned to pursue graduate school eventually, but this invitation felt like a gift dropped straight into my hands. I accepted. My tuition was only nine dollars per quarter, and I was paid to teach while I studied. I worried I might not get enough exposure to statistics, but Dr. Minary reassured me that a master statistician would be teaching in my second year. He was right Building a Life While Building an Education Margie and I lived in the same apartment we had shared while I was at Dayton. With her bachelor’s degree in psychology, she soon learned that the available jobs in Dayton involved cleaning animal cages — hardly what she had hoped. After talking to people on campus, she secured a position assisting the University

Dayton’s

chaplain,

which

included

reduced-tuition benefit. She used it to earn her middle-school teaching certificate. At the end of my master’s program, we knew we wanted to move to Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Unified School District hired her.

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As I’ve written in another chapter, I found a job in statistics. We were both beginning careers that fit us, even if we didn’t yet know where they would lead. Letting Go of the PhD — and Finding Something Better After working for a few years, I thought about getting a PhD in statistics. I applied to UCLA, but the answer was clear: they offered only daytime classes. Unless I found a job that allowed me to work nights—an unlikely scenario—a doctorate wasn’t feasible. At the time, it felt like a disappointment. Looking back, I see it differently. Not pursuing a traditional doctorate meant I didn’t get caught in what I think of as the “ivory tower mentality” — the academic distance that sometimes separates thought from real-life problem-solving. Instead, I ended up working with two giants in statistics: Leo Breiman and Charles Stone. In many ways, my time with them became its own kind of doctoral education. Together, we worked on projects I never could have imagined tackling. One of those efforts — the development of CART, a decision-tree algorithm now used by thousands — is something I remain proud of to this day. I often say I earned my PhD from the School of Breiman and Stone. And in my heart, I believe that’s true.

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A simple CART Decision Tree Choosing a college was never a single decision. It was a series of turns — some deliberate, some unexpected — that guided me toward work I loved, toward people who shaped me, and toward the life that unfolded from there.

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Remembering Margie

The stories I’m sharing in this chapter are based on my memories and what Margie or her family shared with me over the years. They span generations and highlight the vibrant, loving, and sometimes complex life Margie led — both before and during our years together. I met Marjorie Alice Copple in August of 1968. The following summer, in 1969, I lived with her and her parents in their home in the Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles. After returning to California in 1973, Margie and I again lived with her parents for about a year. Then, in 1979, we moved back in with her mother, Dorothy, following the passing of her father, Harris, who always insisted on being called “Al.” We stayed there for four more years.

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1970 Margie and John Orange CA Early Life and Family Roots Margie was born on May 6, 1949, in Los Angeles. Her parents were in their forties at the time, and she was their youngest child by many years. She went on a camping trip as an infant — a testament to the adventurous nature of her family. Her sister, Mary Anne, was a student at USC, and her brother, Bob, was a teenager when Margie was born. Bob would lovingly peel oranges for her, and she was a flower girl at Mary Anne and Stan’s wedding, alongside Stan’s sister.

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One charming story from her childhood involved a car ride with her father. When she was about four, he pointed to the telephone wires between the poles and asked, “What are those wires there for?” Margie replied confidently, “For birds to sit on.” She loved digging in the backyard as a little girl. Her dad used to joke that there were probably still silver spoons buried somewhere. The family originally lived in Compton, but moved to near Wilshire and Western when Margie started seventh grade — a difficult transition that upset her deeply. She started high school a year later due to hospitalization.

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1965 Margie’s Birthday Los Angeles Extended Family and Friendships Margie’s family had strong ties and deep roots. Mary Ann lived around the block in Compton before moving to Palos Verdes, and Margie would take the old Red Line trolley to visit her. Mary Anne’s daughters, Patty and Janice, were like little playmates for Margie.

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Her maternal side was full of educators — her mother, sister, and aunt were all schoolteachers. Her father, Al, worked in the Los Angeles County Court system and served as a Marshal, and at one point, as the Constable of Santa Monica. Margie’s maternal grandfather was a lawyer. The family once watched the end of World War I victory parade from his office in the

Bradbury

Building

downtown

L.A.

Her

paternal

grandfather lived to be over 100. He had served as Mayor of Marshfield (now Coos Bay), Oregon. One of her ancestors had even fought in the Civil War. Al had one sister, Blanch, while Dorothy had several siblings — the only one I met was Janet, who, with her husband Joe, had two sons: Dale and Roger. Margie spent time with Roger growing up. Her parents had a wide circle of lifelong friends. Bill Hays, a high school friend of Al’s, was often around. Dorothy had four close friends since grade school — Lydia, Margaret, Janet, and Lois — and there were frequent gatherings and parties at the house. A Social Spirit and a Thoughtful Soul Margie made friends easily. She often spoke of her two high school friends, Carole and Margarita, who also boarded with her at Marywood, a private Catholic school in Orange, California.

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Many of the other boarders were from Central America, and those relationships broadened her perspective on life. Margie loved to drive, and once she had her own car, she’d pile her friends in and head out on adventures. One trip she mentioned was a drive to San Francisco to visit her brother, Bob. She also participated in a school-sponsored trip to Europe between her junior and senior years, visiting Italy, Switzerland, and France — a formative experience for her. While at Marywood, Margie formed a close bond with several nuns, particularly Sister Virginia Marie, the school’s principal, who had a profound impact on her. It was during her time at Marywood that Margie made the personal decision to be baptized as a Catholic. Margie chose to attend the University of Dayton, partially influenced by one of her teachers who was taking summer classes there. Her time at Marywood and her volunteer work at Queen of Angels Hospital had a profound impact on her. She once said that if we hadn’t married, she might have joined the Sisters of Providence.After we moved to California, her teaching job fell through. So she turned to office work at Magnasen, a computer company, the Los Angeles World Trade Center, and a Century City law firm.

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However, psychology defined her professional life. From 1979 to 1984, she worked as a Campus Minister at the USC Newman Center. In 1981, she began working toward her master’s degree and eventually earned her Marriage and Family Therapist credential. During this time, we were also building our life together—planning for children, exploring the possibility of buying a home, and imagining a future that felt both exciting and uncertain. We made an offer on the Southview house the week after learning she was pregnant with Amy. We moved in early in 1984. Margie returned to school after a pause and completed her degree in 1985. I remember taking Amy with us to Margie’s graduation—parenthood and professional fulfillment unfolding simultaneously. After Eric was born in 1988, Margie continued working with Santa Anita Family Services. She sometimes took Eric with her to work while nursing him, balancing devotion to her children with commitment to her profession. Once she earned her MFT credential, she and several colleagues opened a private practice, where she worked for several years. Her reach extended far beyond her office. Margie became deeply involved with the Child Abuse Prevention Council of Los Angeles. Eventually, she was offered a position overseeing thirteen

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councils. She worked in that role until she was diagnosed with cancer in 2007. Among her most enduring contributions was helping to create the Safely Surrendered Baby Law, which allows a mother to leave an infant at a fire station without legal consequence—a model later adopted across the United States. She also helped develop the “Report Card Abuse Prevention” program, providing multilingual guidance to families on supporting struggling children. That program was distributed to elementary schools throughout Los Angeles County. Margie and I were active in the Temple City School District from the time Amy entered kindergarten, and we remained involved for 17 years. Service, for Margie, was not an abstraction—it was daily, practical, and persistent. Just before Amy’s first wedding, Margie was diagnosed with stage-four cancer. She was told that, statistically, half of those diagnosed lived for 6 months. She was advised to close her private practice, which she did with care and responsibility. What followed were five years marked by surgeries, treatments, and courage. The biological drugs she took could not cross the blood-brain barrier, leading to repeated brain surgeries. Steroids eventually caused devastating side effects. In the final eight months of her life, she lost control of major muscles, developed painful lesions, and endured profound physical fragility with quiet dignity.

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In February 2012, we hosted one last gathering—a party for friends attending a Servite retreat. Soon after, Margie was bedridden. She died that May. Adventures and Challenges The Copple family loved the outdoors. Camping and picnicking in the mountains were favorite pastimes. Charlton Flats, on the other side of Mount Wilson, was one of their regular spots. They also made trips to Oregon and occasionally ventured down to Ensenada, Mexico. On one trip, Al taught me how to split wood—a skill I still remember learning from him. When I was around, Margie’s relationship with her parents seemed mature and stable. She got along well with her father, although tensions would sometimes arise when she was preparing for long absences, such as returning to school in Ohio. Her

relationship

with

her

mother,

Dorothy,

was

complicated. After Al’s passing and our move into Dorothy’s house, they had their share of friction. However, over time, they developed a mutual understanding and learned to coexist peacefully. Reflections Margie was thoughtful, kind, and curious. She had a rich family history and a strong sense of identity, shaped by generations of

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educators, civil servants, and dreamers. Her life was grounded in faith, filled with adventure, and guided by deep compassion — whether she was caring for patients at Queen of Angels, building friendships across cultures, or simply playing with her nieces and nephews. Living with her family gave me an intimate view of the legacy Margie carried. Their stories and traditions became part of my story too. These memories remind me of the ways she shaped our life together — with grace, warmth, and resilience. Margie was thoughtful, kind, curious, and steadfast. She shaped our life together not through grand gestures, but through sustained compassion. Remembering her now, I see how much of her remains woven into everything that followed.

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1969 Margie and Harris Los Angeles

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Learning to Drive

I was 22 years old when I learned how to drive — and Margie was my teacher. Most people I knew had learned to drive in high school, typically around the ages of 16 or 17. But my path was different. I went to high school at a Minor Seminary, 300 miles from where my parents lived. Even though we were a two-car family back in Columbus, Ohio, the idea of my learning to drive never came up. I was used to riding my bicycle wherever I needed to go. During three summers, I worked across the street from where my father worked, so I could always get a ride from him. After high school, I joined the Marine Corps and left for boot camp in September. None of my military jobs required me to drive. When I began college, I stayed close to campus and could usually find someone to give me a lift when I needed one.

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Later in my service, I was stationed in North Carolina, and even then, I always managed to find a ride to Washington, D.C., to Columbus, or wherever I needed to go. I remember one trip vividly. A guy who was giving me a ride asked me to take the wheel. I told him I didn’t know how to drive. He didn’t believe me. When he saw how badly I fumbled at the wheel, he got furious. That was technically my first time behind the wheel — and it didn’t go well. But it wasn’t until Margie and I went to Disneyland that I was truly forced to learn. She had her own car and invited me to go, about a 40-mile drive from her home. We had a lot of fun that day, but after we got off the Matterhorn ride, Margie was hit with a migraine and couldn’t drive home. We called her parents, and they kindly drove out to Disneyland, took both cars, and got all of us home safely. The very next day, I was at the DMV starting the process of getting my driver’s license. A few weeks later, I had it. I learned mostly by driving around Griffith Park after dark. There were fewer cars, fewer distractions, and plenty of winding roads to practice on. My First Car

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After I got my license, I landed a job that required driving. At the time, Margie was working at Queen of Angels, and I was still using her car. That wasn’t going to work in the long term, so I visited one of the Ralph Williams dealerships in Los Angeles and found a used demo car — a 1964 Ford Galaxy. There was just one issue: it didn’t start normally. I had to hot-jump it under the hood to get it running. Eventually, I looked under the hood and found two cut wires. I stripped them and twisted them together, and just like that, the car started without a problem. Later, I learned that if any salesman at Ralph Williams sold a demo car like that, they were fired. It made me wonder how many others got “creative” sales like I did. The first six months of driving that car were terrifying. I didn’t have enough experience. I remember one incident clearly: I was exiting a freeway and hit the brakes too hard while turning. The car spun 180 degrees — right there on the off-ramp. It shook me up. However, over time, I improved. We drove that car all the way to Ohio and back. We used it around campus, and I ended up keeping it for over nine years. Under the Hood (Or Not)

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I’ve never been particularly good with automotive repair. My brothers learned a lot working at gas stations during summer breaks, but that was never my strong suit. I did, however, learn how to handle winter driving, especially on those multiple trips to California through snow-covered roads and winding mountain passes. Eventually, I became a confident driver. I also learned not to be afraid to ask for help or directions when I needed them. Driving became less about the mechanics of the car and more about having the freedom to move, to be there for my family, and to take the journey — wherever it led. Reflection Learning to drive at 22 didn’t make me late to the game. It made the experience memorable, and it made me appreciate the skill even more. It also taught me a lesson I’ve carried through life: You’re never too old to learn something new, especially when someone you love is in the passenger seat, cheering you on.

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Custom Built 2024 Subaru Ascent

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The history of the birth of my children

The Science of Connection — Parenting and Presence Science has found that mothers and babies carry traces of each other’s DNA for decades after birth. These microchimeric exchanges — cellular remnants from gestation — remain in the body

and

may

influence

health,

immunity,

and

even

consciousness. DNA can act like an antenna, transmitting and receiving information. What we often refer to as “mother’s intuition” may, in part, be an act of communication — a resonant connection encoded at the cellular level. Children, too, absorb everything around them. Science confirms this. Experiences from early life — both physical and emotional — get stored in the subconscious and in the body. As adults, we sometimes refer to this as a “gut feeling,” but in children, these feelings are like raw data inputs. They’re little pitchers,

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absorbing everything — tone, tension, energy, and love — long before they understand the words. The science of epigenetics teaches us that our environment influences how our DNA is expressed. It’s not just the genes we inherit — it’s how they’re activated or suppressed by stress, nutrition, love, or trauma. Even before we are born, we are shaped by generations of influence. To bring this into focus, let’s begin in 1948, in Los Angeles, California.

Margie’s

mother,

Dorothy

Copple,

was

schoolteacher. She was 41 years old when Margie was conceived — a time when post-World War II life was filled with both opportunity and stress. Dorothy and her husband, Harris, had steady work throughout the Depression and the war, but I imagine Margie’s conception was unexpected. One critical environmental factor in 1948 was air pollution. That year, Los Angeles opened the nation’s first air pollution control program. Incinerators were banned in 1957, but until then, nearby garbage dumps had regularly burned trash, filling the air with heavy airborne particulates. Dorothy smoked, as did many at the time. Margie remembered riding in the car with both parents smoking, asking for the window to be cracked open. Decades later, Margie and I were preparing to bid on our first home in San Gabriel when we discovered she was pregnant. It

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was the fall of 1983. We had spent four years trying to have a child and were living with Dorothy near Wilshire and Western in LA. Margie had been working at the USC Newman Center for several years and had begun a Master’s in Psychology at Loyola Marymount. With the help of Dr. Roberta Smith, Margie became pregnant, and we began preparing to welcome our first child, Amy. We closed on our house in December 1983 and moved in that February. It was a modest 1,000-square-foot home, and we had only the essentials, but it was ours. While Margie was pregnant, she commuted across LA for her classes — through smog, traffic, and the fatigue of pregnancy. We refinished hardwood floors, painted walls, and dealt with construction fumes. For years, we couldn’t even see the nearby mountains through the haze. We took Lamaze classes and learned that Amy was in a breech position. A C-section was scheduled for July 1, 1984. The day she was born, everything was new — raw, emotional, overwhelming. Margie experienced some postpartum anxiety, which I’ve come to

understand

far

common

than

most

realize.

Parenthood makes you hyperaware of everything. Margie gradually returned to her studies, and in 1987, Amy watched her mother graduate with her Master’s degree.

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We made it a point to surround Amy with extended family, including relatives from both my side and Margie’s, as well as friends who became like chosen family. Before Dorothy passed, she held her granddaughter Amy in her arms, just seven weeks old. A few years later, we added on to the house while living in it. Amy, three years old, handled the disruption like a trooper. Margie became pregnant again during the remodel. In October 1987, the Whittier earthquake struck just after demolition began. Construction paused for weeks, and we camped indoors amid plaster dust and paint fumes. Margie found the odors deeply uncomfortable — and was particularly sensitive to cigarette smoke. Just days before Eric’s birth, we were in a car accident near our home. Thankfully, we were unharmed. The scheduled C-section proceeded, and Eric was born on June 15, 1988, without complications. Amy, nearly four, visited her mother and baby brother in the hospital. She was proud, excited—and very attentive. One of Amy’s early dreams was to become a pediatrician. She adored her brother. We enrolled her in a half-day preschool, while Margie, working toward her Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) license, brought Eric to the agency where she worked. She

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managed billing and, later, after I came home, conducted supervised therapy sessions in the evenings. By the time Eric was two, we had arranged for full-time childcare — with mixed results. He needed stitches on his forehead once, which still stands out in my memory. There were earthquakes throughout their childhood. A show called The Muppet Babies had a character describe earthquakes as the earth “burping.” That helped our children understand without fear. Sibling dynamics were always fascinating. The older child learns the rules of the house early, and the younger child enters an already functioning system — but with a different lens. Parents, too, evolve. We were more experienced by the time Eric came along, but life was more complex. For the first 9 years of Amy’s life and the first 5 of Eric’s, I was home most evenings. Later, for two decades, I worked from home or traveled extensively — commuting weekly to San Diego or the Bay Area. Margie often worked evenings, and we collaborated on home-based projects. Our children grew up watching us work. They saw computers, paperwork, therapy prep — and they absorbed it. I believe both of them inherited our work ethic.

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Through parenting, I learned something essential: children absorb everything. Not just words, but energy, habits, stress, affection, and silence. That’s why the core values of compassion, respect, gratitude, and joy matter so much — especially in how you relate to your spouse, your children, and your extended family. It’s the foundation for staying connected as your children grow into adults. I could write volumes on this. I know every family faces its own unique blend of challenges and victories. But I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to bring two wonderful and responsible human beings into this world. The Small Moments That Matter Eric once shared a memory in response to my chapter on our cats. We had two: Whitefeet and a stray named Jitters. “I remember a moment when I was under 10, when I was being mean to Whitefeet — trying to feed her bugs or something like that. I felt guilty afterward and told Mom. She told me about empathy for the first time that I can remember. It affected me deeply. “Years later, I can remember when Amy threw water on Jitters (I think), and I responded by slapping Amy hard on the back to

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show her how it felt for Jitters to be hit with water.” That memory still moves me. It demonstrates how children internalize values not only through instruction but also through lived experience — and how one lesson can resonate across years. Another memory: at a birthday picnic for one of my grandsons, I noticed a toddler trying to climb a play structure. She couldn’t manage the steps the way the older children did. So she adapted — sitting down, lifting her legs, standing again. She repeated this at every step, slowly climbing to the top. I stood nearby, ready to intervene, but knew that stepping in as a stranger might frighten her. I watched, silently cheering her on. When she finally slid down and ran to her mother, I told her mom what I had witnessed. I was amazed by her determination. The Art of Parenting Being a grandfather has given me the distance to appreciate both my own childhood and the parenting journey I’ve lived more fully. You don’t just learn parenting from books — you learn it from being parented. And if your experience was less than ideal, adulthood provides an opportunity to develop different habits. Parenting is emotional, intuitive, and relational — far more

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than it is logical. The job of a parent is not to mold a child into an image, but to raise a human being — someone who can join society with empathy, resilience, and a sense of responsibility. I believe parenting is the ultimate act of creativity. Like all great creations, it requires effort, patience, love, and the humility to know it will take on a life of its own. As I’ve said before, children are little pitchers. They take in everything. Let what you pour in be respect, compassion, and joy.

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Amy

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Eric

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On Making a Home

I’ve lived in thirty different houses in my life. But living in a house is not the same as making a home. That takes more work, more heart. A house becomes a home when you establish a sense of community — not just with people, but with animals, the surrounding landscape, and even the structure itself. We are beings made of energy. While we recognize the energy within our physical bodies, I believe it extends beyond the physical shell. You can feel it when you enter a room. Sometimes, you can even sense the presence of someone in the next room — more so if it’s someone familiar. Pets often seem to notice this, too. They react when their person approaches, even before they see or hear them. When we move into a new place — a structure we’ve claimed as ours — we begin to personalize it. We imprint our presence. I suspect this tendency is at least partly cultural, but it appears to be universal in some form.

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I’ve thought about what it means to make a house a home, especially when sharing space with someone you’re not related to. In my first year at the University of Dayton, I had a roommate fresh out of high school. I, on the other hand, had just come out of the Marine Corps — five years older and worlds apart in experience. We shared a dorm room, but not a life. I avoided that room as much as possible. Our only real interaction came when we decorated the door for Christmas. He ended up transferring to a college closer to home, and I moved in with some fellow veterans. That next house felt entirely different. There were five of us, and although we didn’t have much money to decorate or furnish the place, it felt like home. We cooked together, studied, shopped, joked, and respected each other. It wasn’t the space — it was the people. When you begin a new relationship with someone — a friendship, a partnership, a household — there’s a nesting phase. You start syncing your routines, understanding each other’s habits, and personalizing your shared space. Ideally, the space begins to reflect the joint tastes and energies of those who inhabit it. Over time, you master time and space together, creating a unique rhythm and energy that defines home. Of the thirty houses I’ve lived in, twenty-four became homes.

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Even our cats, Snap and Crackle, needed convincing that our house was their home. It comes back to energy. You can feel it. You create it. And with time and gratitude, you nurture it. From Eric’s Perspective “Decoration, Decoration, Decoration.” That’s what really stood out to me growing up. No matter how many houses we moved to, there was consistency in how we celebrated the holidays. I remember the little window stickies — for St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Christmas, and probably others. We’d put out the flag for special days. Even as a teenager, when I had friends over, the house still felt like Christmas. We hadn’t stopped decorating, and that left an impression on me. It wasn’t just about the decorations making the house more hospitable — it was about the house reflecting us and the rhythm of life and tradition. It was visual proof that time was passing and that we chose to acknowledge it. That effort mattered. I’m not sure if decorating made the house more comfortable, exactly. But it made it feel like it belonged to the people inside it—and they belonged to each other. Thank you, Eric, for that perspective.

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This year, 2024, Cheryl and I decided to decorate for Christmas — just a little. It filled both of us with joy. The cats were delighted too, batting ornaments and climbing where they shouldn’t. It reminded me again that it’s not the objects or the structure that make a home — it’s the energy, the intention, the love.

2024 Wreath Closing Reflection

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Making a home is an act of devotion — to people, to pets, to moments shared. It’s about investing energy, presence, and sometimes even rituals, into the space around you. So whether you’ve lived in three houses or thirty, take a moment to have gratitude for the places that became more than walls and a roof. Homes are where we pour our lives. And they give back more than we know.

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Memories of my Mother Evelyn Gins

My mother, Evelyn, was undoubtedly the boss of the house. She was a smart, capable woman—she finished high school early, went to junior college, was an artist, and even joined the Marine Corps to support the war effort. That decision, I believe, shaped both her style and her discipline. She carried herself with the authority of someone who had learned early on that the world didn’t give anything away for free. Her early life left a mark on her. Although not an orphan, she spent time in a setting that was essentially an orphanage-like environment because her mother couldn’t afford to support both children. That experience taught her self-sufficiency and, perhaps, a certain emotional guardedness that would become part of how she parented. A Mother’s Discipline

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My mother’s discipline style was direct: corporal punishment. I was spanked often as a child. The last time was just before my sister Theresa was born. She broke her hand on me. That was the kind of woman she was—intense, unpredictable, and mercurial. You never quite knew which version of her you would get. Sometimes she was affectionate, and other times her anger seemed to come out of nowhere. As a result, I spent much of my adult life believing that a punishment would soon follow any reward. That was how she trained us to think. The Artist and the Teacher Despite the strictness, I learned a lot from her. I used to watch her cook and pick up techniques I later improved upon. I once tried to make her a birthday cake. I followed the directions carefully and frosted it—while it was still hot. Of course, the top layer slid right off. Her reaction wasn’t “thank you for trying,” but: “Don’t you know you have to let the cake cool?” That was just how she was. She believed in teaching practical skills—especially those that would ease her burdens. I learned how to sew from her. Even now, my stitching may look like worms crawling, but I can whip stitch just fine.

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Childhood Responsibilities She often put me in charge of watching my younger siblings, which I strongly resisted. I remember one time when I was supposed to take my brothers to the park. Instead, I walked them in that direction and then ran off, leaving them behind. I spent the afternoon playing in a train yard until dark. When I finally returned home—greasy and dirty—the police were at the door. Needless to say, I didn’t pull that stunt again. Eventually, I learned to be responsible for them, and I took that role seriously later on. Faith and Family Aspirations Both my parents dreamed of having a priest in the family. One year, we received a toy mass set with plastic vestments and a chalice, and my brothers and I would take turns “saying Mass.” Soon after, I decided I wanted to become a priest. Although I didn’t follow that path, my brothers Paul and Pat joined me in the seminary—Paul eventually became a priest. What I appreciated most about seminary, in truth, was that it was 300 miles from home. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was full of anger and rage, and getting away was the best thing that could have happened to me. The seminary also provided me with a classical education—functioning more like a college

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preparatory school than a religious institution. A Summer Strategy During the summers, I worked jobs that kept me out of the house. That limited my interactions with my family, which, in hindsight, was necessary for my own well-being. When I joined the Marine Corps, my mother expected me to write frequently—probably every day. In reality, she was lucky to get one letter a month. I didn’t realize how worried she must have been. Each day felt the same to me, and I didn’t think there was much worth writing about. Instead, I sent her slides and photographs, which she used to give presentations to school children about what I was doing. That meant a lot to her, I think. Her Humor, Her Pride My mother was the family joke-teller. Most of her humor was wordplay—nothing off-color—and my brothers and I have carried on that tradition, though I try to restrain myself when I can. She also held herself in high esteem. I remember her taking on jobs where she felt she knew better than anyone else how things should be done. Often, she didn’t last long in those roles.

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Still, she gave her time generously. She volunteered extensively, especially with the USO and other organizations. However, while she gave freely, compassion didn’t always accompany it. She often felt that if she gave something, she was owed gratitude, and she could become resentful if that appreciation weren’t shown. Gratitude and Legacy The most important lesson I received from both my parents was this: Serve God and serve your country. For that—and for bringing me into this world—I am deeply grateful to them both.

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As a teenager my mom wanted to raft through the Grand Canyon

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Memories of my Father Stanley Gins

It’s hard, as a child, to recall exactly all the things my father and I did together. What I do remember is that my dad, Stanley Gins, was a quiet man — especially around the house. He wasn’t the type to talk much, but he was almost always doing something: fixing things, reading, keeping his hands and mind occupied. Growing up with my brothers, Pat and Paul, we had moments of play together — I especially remember playing basketball with him after we moved to Ohio. I’ve seen photos of us in the snow at a park in New Jersey, and I still recall the warm feeling of family outings, especially to places like Bear Mountain State Park. One memory that stands out is when I got my first bicycle at the age of seven. It was an adult-sized bike — too big, really. I couldn’t quite reach the pedals, and though my dad tried to help

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me learn to ride, we moved soon after. The bike wasn’t unpacked again until I was older, when I could finally use it on my own. He helped me with schoolwork from time to time, especially math. I remember struggling with long division because I hadn’t fully memorized my multiplication tables. I was determined to figure it out myself — not always the best listener when my dad tried to explain. But in his quiet way, he tried to guide me. We also worked on small projects together. I once disassembled a broken electric clock to see if I could repair it. My dad told me I’d never get it to work again. But I did — and I still remember the pride I felt in proving him wrong. When Words Leave a Mark Some of my most vivid memories of my father are not always warm or easy to recall. There’s one story I rarely tell. In eighth grade, I tried out for the basketball team. I’d only ever played with my brothers — never on a team — and didn’t know much about uniforms or athletic gear. For practice, I wore underwear under my gym shorts — not knowing whether that was right or wrong. They happened to have a slight pink tint. After practice, my father told me I looked like a girl with “pink lace” under my gym shorts.

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I was humiliated. That comment hit me hard. It stung in a way that I couldn’t shake. From that moment forward, I swore off organized sports entirely. To this day, I’ve had no interest in professional basketball, football, baseball — none of it. Looking back, I see how pivotal that moment was. It wasn’t just the words — it was how much a father’s comment can shape a child, for better or worse. The Seeds of Curiosity Still, my father taught me things that have stuck with me for a lifetime. One of the most unique lessons came when he was taking a computing course while we were still living in New Jersey. I must have been eight or nine years old. When he got home from class, I asked what he’d learned. He sat down and showed me how to add and subtract using binary numbers. That small exchange sparked a lifelong curiosity — one that became foundational in my work with computers and logic years later. Another lasting influence came from simply watching him read. My dad read all the time. While he didn’t directly encourage reading, his example left a deep impression on me. I came to

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believe that if I needed to know something, I could read about it and teach myself. After we moved to Columbus, Ohio, in eighth grade, I often rode my bike with my brothers to the local library. I’d check out the maximum number of books, return them the next week, and get a fresh stack. In high school, I spent most of my free time in the school library, especially with the science fiction section. By the time I graduated, I’d read nearly every book on the shelves. Reading helped me grow, but it may have also contributed to my average grades — I was often more interested in my library finds than my homework. That love of books followed me into the Marine Corps. My mother mailed me boxes of books, and I’d pull out the sci-fi novels and leave the rest in the base library for others to enjoy. Later, as an English minor in college, I even tried to recommend a few books to my dad. I suggested he read Ulysses by James Joyce. He gave it a shot, decided it was pornographic, and never touched it again. That was that. The Things You Learn Too Late After he died, I learned more about my father than I ever knew while he was alive.

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At his funeral, I met people who had worked with him. They spoke of him as someone reliable, intelligent, and generous with his time. I also learned that he had taught Sunday school — something I never knew while growing up. There’s no denying I inherited some of his stubbornness. But I’ve tried to transform that trait into resilience and persistence — qualities that have served me well. One of our best shared moments came later in life. The year after my mother passed away, my father came to visit us in California. We didn’t talk much. We didn’t need to. We would often sit together, reading side by side in silence. To an outsider, those moments might seem unremarkable. To me, they were everything. They weren’t about advice, lessons, or revelations. They were just about being present — something we’d both learned to appreciate in our own quiet ways. Final Reflections My father was a complex man — not overly expressive, not always easy to understand. He didn’t share much about his time in the Marine Corps; what little I learned came mostly from my mother, and later, from reading parts of his autobiography.

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There

were

gaps

our

relationship,

things

unsaid or

misunderstood. But there was also a deep, subtle influence — in the way I read, in the way I think, and in how I view the world. And perhaps most importantly, in how I’ve tried to be a father myself — with guidance, yes, but also with compassion.

1970 my dad and Uncle Matty

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My Life with Cheryl

I met Cheryl about five weeks after Margie died. By then, I had begun to emerge from the first heavy haze of grief—the stunned, breathless place where time doesn’t quite behave. I realized something important: if I wanted to have a long and meaningful life, I needed to re-engage with living itself. I needed to move my body, wake up my endorphins, and reconnect with the world. So I did something that surprised even me. I went online to a dating site aimed at people like me who had already lived some life. I posted a profile that felt honest and a little playful: a photo of me wearing a wizard hat, another of me holding a prime rib roast I had cooked. I talked about who I was. Within a week, Cheryl said hello. Or perhaps I said hello first—I no longer remember who reached out first. What I do remember is reading her profile carefully. She had written about her

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“non-negotiables,” the qualities she wanted in a partner. I responded to every one of them. Our messages went back and forth easily, naturally. When I realized we lived only three miles apart—after

hearing

from

people

far

away

Tennessee—that fact alone felt remarkable. We met in Pasadena for a meal and then went to a Coen Brothers movie. It was quirky, offbeat, something involving a hurricane and a Boy Scout camp. I can’t recall the title, but I remember the feeling: conversation that flowed, laughter that came easily, a sense of being fully present. Not long after, I invited Cheryl to the Southview house for the Fourth of July. I learned that she cared deeply about food quality, so I found grass-fed bison ribeye chops from Alexander’s and cooked them for the occasion. Somewhere between that meal and the fireworks, our relationship began to take flight. We spent more time together. We talked. We walked. We started going to yoga classes together—both of us knowing we needed movement, grounding, and care. Being together felt natural, unforced. That summer, I had already signed up for an eighty-nine-day cruise—something I had planned before Cheryl entered my life. I invited her to come. She declined gently and wisely. “That’s for you,” she said. “You need that time to be by yourself—to learn

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who you are and what you want.” The cruise was still a year and a half away, so I accepted her answer without worry. We decided to go on a get-well journey together. Later, I took a cross-country road trip with my son Eric, combining work and travel. It was 2012, during the Republican nomination process, and political commentary filled the car. A hurricane altered our original plan to stop in New Orleans, so we rerouted through Little Rock and into Kentucky. Along the way, we explored the Bourbon Trail—sampling selectively, enjoying the history as much as the spirits. On my return west, Cheryl and I arranged to meet in Minneapolis, where she was visiting her niece and working. From there, we drove together. I wanted to see North Dakota—one of the few states I hadn’t visited—so we went that way, then into Montana to visit friends, Hugh and Mary Grace Black, in St. Helena. That trip tested us early. My brand-new car broke down, and the necessary parts weren’t available. We rented a vehicle and went to Yellowstone. One evening, I took Cheryl to the Grand Tetons for supper, the mountains catching the moonlight in a way that made conversation feel almost unnecessary. Eventually, Cheryl had to fly back for business. I stayed, retrieved my repaired car, and made my way home.

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Eric accepted Cheryl easily. Amy struggled more at first, understandably worried that Cheryl might be “replacing” Margie. I wish I had known then some of what I know now—how to hold space for a child’s grief better while honoring my own need to live forward. Still, we worked through it. That New Year’s, I planned a trip to Death Valley with Cheryl. She chose not to go. I went alone. When I returned, we had to restart—honestly, carefully. It turned out to be a gift. Better to encounter difficulty early and learn that mutual respect and affection can carry you through it.

Aunt Stella and Cheryl in 2015

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Not long after, I became seriously ill. The blood thinners I was taking for atrial fibrillation caused internal bleeding. Cheryl recognized what was happening and intervened decisively. She got me to the hospital. She saved my life. I’ve told that story elsewhere. It doesn’t need repeating here—but it matters. I did go on the long cruise. Cheryl followed my journey through a phone app that showed my location as a dot on a map. I would tell her about a beautiful temple, and she would laugh and say, “I see the dot.” Halfway through the trip, I bonded with a table of women. The first thing I told them was that I planned to get off the ship and propose to Cheryl. That set the tone: friendship, clarity, no confusion. When I returned, I proposed. Cheryl said yes—and then said, “Let’s wait a year.” We did. Thoughtfully. Intentionally. I continued living and working out of the Southview house. Cheryl ran her business from her home, with staff present during the day, so evenings together made sense. Eventually, she needed to open an office, and I helped where I could. I had learned from Margie’s business that technology must serve a business—not

overwhelm

it.

Cheryl

ran

her

practice

exceptionally well. My role was to support, not steer. I sold the Southview house within five years of Margie’s death, partly

for

tax

reasons.

137

explored

where

live

HOLDING ON TO THE ROCKET SHIP-JOHN GINS

next—California, Utah, and Arizona. Sedona stood out. Its aquifer is fed from Flagstaff, three thousand feet higher, with an eight-hundred-year supply. Practical considerations matter. So does beauty. Sedona had both. We had already shifted to a yoga studio, finding our way to Body & Brain, which emphasized energy movement and introduced us to Taoist concepts. Through that community, we attended retreats in Sedona at a center called Mago—Mother Earth. Gradually, the decision made itself. We bought a house in the Village of Oak Creek with cash and lived there part-time for 6 years—even through COVID. When we adopted our kittens, we trained them to travel with us. Eventually, we sold Cheryl’s family home in Arcadia and the Oak Creek home and merged our funds to purchase our current home in Rimrock, Now we are settled. Cheryl continues her work as a health coach—researching, writing, guiding others. I pursue my own studies in Taoism, quantum physics, and related ideas. Our paths run

parallel,

intersecting

constantly.

insights,

challenge one another, and grow together. I often say I was twice lucky in marriage. Lucky with Margie. Lucky with Cheryl. I am grateful I was able to be a good partner to both of them. I am grateful for the life I had, and for the life I

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am still living. I like to think that Margie and Cheryl would have been fast friends. And in that thought, there is peace.

Cheryl 2025

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Why Sedona Called Me

My first visit to Sedona was in March, during my first wedding anniversary with Cheryl. Like many, I was struck by the sheer grandeur of the place — the soaring red rocks, the crisp desert air, the powerful silence. But one of my most vivid memories from that trip isn’t a rock formation or a view — it’s the lilac bushes. Their soft purple blossoms and sweet fragrance created a moment of beauty that has stayed with me ever since. Both Cheryl and I felt a strong sense of spiritual connection in Sedona, though at the time, we didn’t yet know how to access or interpret it. I’ve traveled to many beautiful places around the world, but Sedona stood out — not just for its beauty, but for its accessibility. It’s a wonder you can return to again and again. And we did. Within six months, we were back. At that time, my retirement, planned for August at age 70, was already underway. Just a few months before, Cheryl and I had started attending yoga classes at Body & Brain Yoga in Monrovia.

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I hadn’t yet decided what I wanted to do after retiring, and I chose to leave it up to the universe to show me a direction. We trained with yoga teacher Scott Lee and healer Junie Lee. I was in poor physical condition when I started, but I persevered — and in just a few months, I saw real improvements. Then Scott invited us to a Sedona Meditation Retreat at the Sedona Mago Retreat Center that October. That experience awakened something in me. It stirred old memories and helped me reconnect with a calling that had once been central to my life. To explain this awakening, I need to share a bit of my earlier journey. A Calling Interrupted When I was in the eighth grade in Columbus, Ohio — shortly after we moved from Chicago — I spent several months in public school before transferring to Christ the King Catholic School. Around that time, I felt a deep pull toward the priesthood. I wanted to join a religious society, inspired by Father Nick, a Servite priest I had known in New Jersey and Chicago. My parents and the parish pastor were supportive. I enrolled in a Minor Seminary near Chicago — a boarding school for young men discerning religious life.

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Near the end of my first year, I had doubts about continuing my studies. During a week-long retreat, I had a powerful vision of a multi-faceted gem floating over the altar. I understood this vision as a direct message from God—and I decided to stay. However, three years later, just before graduation, the Servite order informed me that I could not continue with their community. I was devastated and lost. My parents had always said, “Your duty is to serve God and Country.” Without a clear path forward, I joined the U.S. Marine Corps. I served four years, including two in Vietnam, where I worked with the Catholic Chaplain. Much of that work involved helping refugees — and it helped me keep my connection to a life of service and to God. After returning home, I enrolled at the University of Dayton to join the Marianist order — but instead, I met Margie Copple, who had known some of my high school teachers. We married at the end of our sophomore year. My spiritual journey took many forms over the years, but I never forgot that vision of the gem — even though I didn’t fully understand its meaning. A Signpost in the Desert During the Sedona Meditation Tour, that old vision returned — this time, in a book. In “The Call to Sedona” by Ilchi Lee, I saw a pictorial representation of the same multi-faceted gem I had seen in the seminary chapel decades earlier. It was a signpost,

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pointing me back to a path I had unknowingly left behind. With

Cheryl’s

support,

began

visiting

Sedona

frequently. On one visit, I led a group of students down to Oak Creek. We found two young boys splashing in the water under the watchful eyes of their grandparents. In that moment, I had a vision of the future — of bringing my own grandchildren to play in Sedona’s nature. I wanted them to feel the same sense of freedom and connection. Eventually, Cheryl and I employed spiritual and intuitive practices to help us find our first home near Bell Rock, a place that had always drawn us energetically. It took over five years of back-and-forth travel for us to realize that Sedona is far more than its iconic red rocks. It’s a whole ecosystem — physical, emotional, spiritual — waiting to be explored. Learning to Live in the Now Cheryl and I both grew up in urban environments. Moving to a rural area taught us to slow down and deepen our connection with the Earth and our neighbors. Life here moves at a different rhythm — one that allows you to focus on what truly matters. We discovered what I now call “glimmers” — moments of awe and beauty that catch your attention and speak directly to your soul, like seeing a butterfly land on a snowy branch. These

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glimmers are easy to miss in a city. Here, they’re woven into daily life. One of my ongoing goals is to live fully in the present moment — something I plan to explore further in a separate chapter. A major motivation for moving to Sedona was to learn how to actualize this way of living, surrounded by a community of like-minded people who support spiritual growth. The natural world here continues to astound me. Light snow in the winter. Summer monsoons with booming thunder and shimmering rainbows. Glorious sunsets and sunrises. And at night, a sky full of stars. It’s what I imagine Heaven on Earth could feel like.

25 miles of red rock

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Expanding My Mission My parents believed serving God and Country was life’s highest calling. In Sedona, I’ve expanded that vision. I now understand that serving God begins by serving ourselves with love, and then sharing that love and gratitude by respectfully connecting with others — with people, the land, and the world. In many ways, living in Sedona has felt like being cocooned. It gave me the time and space to transform. And I have high expectations for what I’m transforming into.

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My Progeny

My Progeny When Margie and I married in 1970, we made a decision that surprised some people, confused others, and surprised my mother: we would not have children. At the time, the world felt precarious. The threat of global nuclear war was real, not theoretical, and we questioned whether it was wise to bring children into such uncertainty. Beyond that, both of us carried unresolved disagreements with how we had been raised. We worried that if we became parents too quickly, we would default to patterns we hadn’t yet examined—repeating what we knew rather than choosing what we believed. So instead of having children, we studied them. I took a course in child psychology. Margie researched health, development, and the meaning of raising children well. Years passed. The world changed. We changed. About a decade later,

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the future felt more hopeful, and we felt better prepared. Only then did we realize that deciding to have children did not guarantee that it would be easy. We deliberately switched doctors, choosing Dr. Roberta Smith because we believed she could help us. In 1984, Amy was born. In 1988, Eric followed. We wanted two children, spaced four years apart, and that is exactly what we had. Years later, Amy asked a question that stayed with me: Why did you want children? The honest answer is optimism. We believed we could raise children who were curious, thoughtful, and capable of finding their place in a world we hoped would continue to improve. As firstborn, Amy experienced Margie and me learning how to be parents in real time. There is no training for it. You make mistakes. You discover surprises. One thing we were certain about, though, was this: we never talked down to our children. We spoke to them as if they could understand us—not every nuance, but the intent and the respect. By the time they were in school, teachers noticed that their vocabulary sounded unusually adult. One small story captures how we tried to parent. When Amy was six or seven, she was sitting on the couch, cutting paper with

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scissors, when she accidentally sliced a hole in a beautiful purple denim skirt she loved. She was devastated. I searched for a patch and found a small, cloth unicorn. I sewed it over the hole, and the skirt became Amy’s unicorn skirt. By the end, she was smiling. The skirt was saved, and she learned to be more careful. Mistakes, when handled gently, can become stories instead of scars. Eric’s stories were different. When he announced he wanted to learn karate, it struck me as odd—until I realized he had been inspired by his cousin Tom. We enrolled him as young as possible, around five and a half. Eric was tall for his age, and in competitions, he was often paired with girls his size. He took our advice seriously: you don’t hit girls. As a result, I don’t think he won a single match. When it came time for his black belt test, however, he was paired with a boy his own age. Eric fought so hard that one of the instructors had to restrain him when the test ended physically. He wasn’t afraid of fighting; he was conscientious about who he fought. That distinction mattered to us. Amy faced her own social lessons. In middle school, she once asked me to meet the mother of a friend after school. I knew instantly it would be awkward—the girl’s mother was from an Asian culture where interacting with a male stranger was

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uncomfortable. I did my best to be gracious, but the visit never happened. Amy learned from that experience and formed friendships that flourished more naturally. Those girls seemed to spend half their time at our house, which felt exactly right. Margie and I both worked from home on special projects, and we involved the kids when we could—stuffing envelopes, helping with small tasks. They saw us work. They saw us collaborate. I worked at a table in the kitchen; Margie worked in the bedroom. Without formal instruction, they learned what work looked like—and, just as importantly, that work and life could coexist. Computers entered their lives early. In fourth or fifth grade, Amy typed a paper on my computer and printed it out. The presentation alone impressed her teachers enough that she won a school award and advanced to the county level. Eric took to computers differently. In kindergarten, he changed every

setting

make

the

programs

difficult

possible—rendering them unusable for the rest of the class. His teacher called me, baffled. We solved the problem, but it was an early sign of how deeply he liked challenge and control. As computers became common in the 1990s, many parents feared the “information superhighway.” I taught a class on internet safety, helping families understand both the risks and the

potential.

Today,

those

150

same

children—and

their

HOLDING ON TO THE ROCKET SHIP-JOHN GINS

parents—are fluent digital users, facing challenges we never imagined then. Technology

can

amplify

curiosity,

but

also

demands

discernment. Without guidance, constant comparison and social media feedback can lead to anxiety and depression. Margie and I believed that curiosity must be encouraged, but bounded, and that children must be taught how to evaluate what they encounter, not simply consume it. We were deeply involved in the Temple City School District while our children were growing up—seventeen years of close contact with public education in the Los Angeles area. One thing became clear to us: public schools are designed for the middle. If a child is far ahead or far behind, the system struggles to serve them well. I believe the true purpose of education is to teach children how to learn. Reading, mathematics, communication, writing, and now computing are tools—but the greater skill is learning how to adapt as tools change. The generation after my children faces a harder challenge. Entry-level jobs, once used for learning, are increasingly automated. Artificial intelligence is reshaping what work looks like.

owe

young

people

not

just

education,

but

pathways—ways to apply curiosity and learning into meaningful

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contributions. When I look at Amy and Eric now, I see two people shaped not by perfection, but by intention and respect. Margie and I did not have children lightly. We waited, we studied, we hoped—and then we learned, every day, alongside them. That, I think, is the best any parent can do.

Strong Michael at airport mesa

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Amy, Michael, John, and Andrew 2019

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Holiday Memories

My holiday memories stretch across many decades, shaped by family, distance, tradition, and change. Some are joyful, some bittersweet, and a few are etched into me with a clarity I will never lose. One of my earliest memories comes from when I was six or seven, after we moved to Carteret, New Jersey. That Christmas, we had a large tree, and my father set up a Lionel train set that circled its base. I was mesmerized. So mesmerized, in fact, that I knocked the entire tree over while playing with the train. Ornaments shattered across the floor. My parents were not pleased, to put it mildly. It was an early lesson in enthusiasm and consequence. In my first year of high school, I spent Thanksgiving at a friend’s house on the south side of Chicago, in my old parish. His parents were Polish, and they prepared a turkey stuffed with wild mushrooms they had gathered themselves. I have never tasted

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anything quite like it since. I wish I could recreate that stuffing, but some flavors belong only to memory. By my fourth year of high school, I spent Easter with Rich Meuller and his family. Rich and his brothers were amateur radio operators, and during that visit, we listened to radio traffic following the Good Friday earthquake of 1964 in Anchorage, Alaska. Hearing those voices travel across continents was astonishing. With twelve children in the family, one extra guest made little difference at the Easter table. Food, noise, and life were abundant. Another Easter memory comes from my first year in seminary, when I visited neighbors in Country Club Hills, Illinois. A Catholic church had been built by joining two houses together. Outside, someone tried to light the Paschal candle using a barbecue — and far too much lighter fluid. The flames nearly reached the roof. Even sacred rituals can teeter on the brink of chaos. Some holidays are impossible to separate from history. On Christmas Eve of 1965, while I was stationed in Da Nang, Vietnam, we were awakened and sent to help clear the site of a plane crash. A Flying Tigers aircraft had come up short of the runway and plowed into a Vietnamese village just as families were sitting down to dinner. The scene was horrifying — flames,

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smoke, the smell of burning fuel. Words don’t do it justice. The next day, I was scheduled to start duty at midnight and knew I would miss Cardinal Spellman’s Christmas Mass. At the time, that felt like a great loss. In retrospect, it was insignificant compared to what I had witnessed the night before. The following year, in 1966, I did attend the Mass — this time as a chaplain’s assistant — standing close to the altar. Perspective changes everything. Christmas in Vietnam also brought a Bob Hope show — I believe in 1966 — and surprisingly good food: turkey and all the fixings. Not as elaborate as what the Army was known for, but warm, filling, and grounding. When I returned to the States and began college, my freshman Christmas was quiet. I had the flu and remember little beyond being grateful to be home with my family in Columbus. I also remember trying to call Margie in California. I spoke with her father, but never reached her. At the time, we were not yet a couple, and I had heard she might not return for the winter semester. She did return. We fell in love. Our grandchildren are living proof of that turn of events. After Margie and I married, we celebrated Christmas in a tiny apartment. Each year, we bought one special ornament — just one — to mark the season. We learned to make stollen, a German

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Christmas bread rich with fruit and almonds, and it became part of our tradition for years. When we moved back to Los Angeles, holidays were often spent with the Copple family, while Great Grandma and Great Grandpa were

still

alive.

Gatherings

took

place

their

large

Wilshire-area home. One memory stands out clearly: little Susy, Bob and Betty’s daughter, watching her grandfather control the dimmer switch. He would raise his arm, and the lights would brighten; lower it, and they would dim. To her, it was magic. Susy also had a favorite joke involving a squeaky toy banana. She would pretend to listen to it, tell someone she couldn’t hear them because she had a banana in her ear, and repeat the joke endlessly. We must have heard it thirty times. I doubt she remembers it now, but I do. We

also

spent

Christmases

Columbus

with

family—grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I remember Eric making snow angels. We sometimes celebrated holidays in Mill Valley with Bob and Betty, including Halloween and one Christmas when I recorded everything on a video camera. Watching those recordings later felt like opening a time capsule. After Margie’s father died, we often spent holidays with Mary Anne and Stan, or with Patty and Jim and their family. From

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Jim’s family came the tradition of the White Elephant gift exchange—a lesson in humor, generosity, and letting go of expectations. Over time, I realized something about holidays and extended families: when you only see people on holidays and birthdays, you spend perhaps two hours a year together. Over forty years, that adds up — slowly, imperfectly — into understanding. Birthdays carried their own meaning. We threw a large celebration for Margie’s sixtieth, near her birthday, because she wanted to celebrate while she could. For my fiftieth, my brother Paul hosted a party at his rectory in Orange County. It was unexpected and deeply meaningful. Being born in August, many of my birthdays became shared celebrations — graduations, milestones, gatherings of all kinds. After Margie died, my birthday marked a celebration of her life. Later, birthdays became something I shared with Cheryl. We celebrate differently now. We often plan trips around her January birthday — to Big Sur. For my birthday, we drove both directions along Route 66 from Flagstaff, seeing how time has worn it down. Another year, we stayed in a creekside cabin at Briar Patch Inn, reading, resting, and enjoying the canyon air, cooler and quieter than Sedona itself.

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In recent years, Amy has visited with her family. We’ve cooked cabbage rolls, shared meals, and enjoyed time together. The visits are short, but sweet. Cheryl and I often host small dinners for friends at Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s. We cook our favorite recipes—clean, organic, and nourishing. We eat well, and we laugh. Looking back, my holidays tell the story of a life lived across places, families, losses, and renewals. Some memories shine brightly; others ache. Together, they form a tapestry I wouldn’t trade.

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Mary Anne, Janice, Cheryl, Amy, and Patricia

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Michael, John, Eric, Justin, and Andrew

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A San Francisco Xmas I look forward to many more holidays — shared, simple, and full of presence — with all of you.

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A Lifelong Journey Through Books

From as far back as I can remember, reading has been one of my greatest passions. Science fiction and fantasy are my favorite genres, but my literary tastes span from the epic tales of Gilgamesh to the latest bestsellers. I rarely go anywhere without some form of reading material or books on tape, and I think I’ve always been this way. Early Reading and Academic Choices My early school grades sometimes suffered because I preferred reading to studying. When I arrived at college, I crafted my academic path to earn credit for reading. Though I majored in Mathematics, I minored in English and Philosophy. At the University of Dayton, I even lobbied the English department to add a Science Fiction class to the curriculum, reflecting my deep love for the genre.

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Favorite Authors and Books Over the years, I have tried to narrow down my favorite books, though it feels impossible to do justice to such a rich collection. Here are some highlights: J.R.R. Tolkien – All of his works, including the obscure ones Alan Dean Foster – Especially the Spellsinger and Flinx series; I even read his original screenplay for Alien Robert Heinlein – A staple of my youth, both his books and short stories Arthur C. Clarke – Starting with his deep-sea diving adventures Isaac Asimov Fritz Leiber – The Gray Mouser series A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. Homer and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales James Michener – Particularly The Source and Caravans Piers Anthony – The Xanth series Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Especially The Black Swan Hans Enzensberger’s The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure – A favorite book I give to help others appreciate math Edwin Abbott’s Flatland

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C.S. Lewis Jared Diamond – Especially Guns, Germs, and Steel Orson Scott Card – Particularly Tales of Alvin Maker and the Ender series Neal Stephenson Marion Zimmer Bradley – The Darkover books Simon Winchester and Mark Kurlansky – Often on food and history How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill Daniel G. Hawkins – Power vs. Force George Box – An Accidental Statistician Il Chi Lee Teilhard de Chardin Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl Robert A. Johnson – Books like He and She Philip K. Dick Kurt Vonnegut Ovid’s Metamorphoses Umberto Eco The Refiner’s Fire by Sigrid McPherson Roger Zelazny Robert Silverberg

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This list represents a tapestry of history, science, alternate history, hard science fiction, swords and sorcery — and that barely scratches the surface of my interests. I haven’t even touched on space military science fiction, which is another deep well of fascination. Reading Habits and Preferences Once I start a book, it’s difficult not to finish it, though there are exceptions—especially with short stories that I sometimes read slowly over time. I seldom reread books, preferring to explore new ones. In recent years, I’ve leaned more on Kindle and Audible, which offer convenience and newer literature, even if their collections lack many of the older titles I love. Having read so much, I occasionally find new authors who offer nothing fresh, but I’m always thrilled when I discover a unique perspective on an old storyline. The Challenge of Series and Book Storage The last fifty years have seen a trend toward multi-volume or book series. While I enjoy being deeply involved with characters, it frustrates me when authors or publishers don’t warn readers ahead of time that a series will unfold in a particular way. Now, I try to wait until the complete set is available before diving in.

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I used to lend my books to my brother, Patrick, but eventually, I ran out of storage space. Now, I have boxes of books tucked away in my garage. Love for Libraries and Bookstores I cherish the touch and feel of books, but more than that, I love how books are positioned next to each other in bookstores. I can get lost in a library for hours and often seek out small, specialized bookstores—usually owned by people who truly love books. Publishing Experience Finally, I’ve had the privilege of seeing several books and magazines I helped create go into print. That process was eye-opening, exasperating, and wonderful all at once. I’m grateful for Cheryl’s research and authorship, as well as for the many others who contributed to making those publications possible.

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Singing all my Life

I believe I began singing before I was conscious of it as a choice. Singing was simply there—like breath, like thought. If there is quiet around me, there is almost always a song moving underneath it. One of my earliest clear memories comes from eighth grade, when I transferred into a Catholic school. I wanted—deeply—to belong to the choir and the glee club. So one day, without much forethought or embarrassment, I stopped the choir director in the hallway and sang Ave Maria to her on the spot. I don’t remember which version it was, only the certainty with which I sang it. I must have sounded convincing enough, because I was welcomed in. That Christmas, we sang ’Twas the Night Before Christmas in the annual show. It was my introduction to something that would profoundly shape me: singing as discipline, devotion, and community all at once. In the seminary, we sang Gregorian chant

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almost daily. Chant wasn’t a performance; it was prayer made audible. The melodies were spare, circular, and grounding. They didn’t rush anywhere. They were.

Gregorian Chant As juniors and seniors, we listened to records—many, many records. Show tunes filled our evenings. We sang along to West Side Story, South Pacific, and everything in between. Those songs lodged themselves into my memory, where they remain to this day. Music became something I carried with me, something portable and sustaining. Boot camp made singing out loud nearly impossible, but the music didn’t stop. It just moved inward. I sang in my head—marching, waiting, enduring. Through Vietnam, there was almost always a song playing quietly inside me. It might not

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have been something I dared voice aloud, but it was there, steady and reassuring, like a private companion. Along the way, I encountered music through many religious traditions. I attended Jewish services and Baptist services, learning their musical languages as much as their rituals. Each tradition carried its own cadence, its own emotional vocabulary. Still, Gregorian chant remained my home base. Even as I grew curious about other forms, chant anchored me. Margie expanded my musical world in a completely different direction. Through her, I was introduced to Motown. Those songs from the late 1960s and early 1970s still circulate in my mind—full of longing, joy, heartbreak, and resilience. The radio was often on, and while I never truly fell in love with most popular music, I absorbed it. I can sing along with much of it even now. I’ve always preferred music where I can understand the words. Because of that, much of the music from the 1980s never quite resonated with me. It passed through my awareness without settling. As for contemporary music, I’m not sure I would recognize much of it—but movies have continued to teach me songs, and I pick them up almost without trying. Folk music has always spoken to me more than rhythm and blues, though nothing has ever been entirely off-limits. I’ve

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sung in French, in Latin, in English—and sometimes in no language at all, inventing melodies as I go. In tai chi practice, where dancing is often part of the exercise, I frequently make up music in my head, even if other music is playing in the background. My body seems to want its own soundtrack. In recent years, as I’ve studied frequency and its effects on the human body, something old began to make new sense. Gregorian chant, I learned, uses many of the healing frequencies identified in the early twentieth century. One of the major shifts occurred around 1939, when the standard tuning frequency changed. Since

then,

much

popular

music

has

carried

subtle

discordance—something the body registers even if the mind does not. Frequency, I’ve come to believe, is one of the ways we converse with the universe. If that’s true, then song may well be the language of heaven. At this very moment, the song running through my head is “Top of the World” by the Carpenters—I’m on top of the world, looking down on creation. That lyric feels less like optimism and more like perspective. In the past six months, Cheryl and I have surrounded ourselves with sound in new ways. We’ve bought singing bowls, tuning forks, chimes, tongue drums, and even a harp chair. These are

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not instruments meant for performance, but for resonance—for listening as much as for playing. Quantum physics tells us that everything is vibration. Long before I knew the science, my body knew the truth of that. I have been singing all my life—out loud, under my breath, and silently within. Songs have steadied me in discipline, carried me through war, softened grief, and deepened joy. Even now, if the world goes quiet, the music does not stop. It never has.

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Family-Friendship and the Bonds of Brothers

Over the years, I’ve had many acquaintances—some fleeting, others lasting—but my closest and most enduring friendships have always been with my family: my brothers, Patrick and Paul; my sisters, Mary and Theresa; and my wives, Margie and Cheryl. While I have had mentors who shaped me along the way and business colleagues with whom I stayed connected, the people who come to mind most often are my brothers—especially Paul and Patrick. Paul is a Catholic priest, a member of the Order of Servants of Mary, and in 2025, he celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination. Patrick and Paul are twins, born two years and a month after me in Jersey City. They were so small at birth that they spent time in incubators. I first remember walking with Aunt Stella, pushing their baby carriage.

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People often assume I have a twin, so I’ve learned to say, “I have two brothers who are twins.” Our parents instilled in me the responsibility of caring for my brothers and, later, my sisters. We played a lot growing up—there were moments when Pat and Paul would try to gang up on me, but I learned early that I could win by pushing one into the other. We built a fort together in the backyard of our home in Country Club Hills, Illinois. I also recall a moment of childhood frustration when I threw a hammer at Paul—it missed his head but hit the back of it. Another vivid memory is watching a tornado suddenly change direction before it neared our house. Chess was a shared passion among us, as was reading. As an adult, I often sent Patrick books I had finished, and Paul and I have exchanged books over the years. Patrick and Paul joined me at Servite Seminary in my junior year. Although we mostly interacted with our classmates rather than each other, it was reassuring to know they were there. In my last months in the Marine Corps, I took a few days’ leave to visit Columbus, Ohio, where Paul and I had intense, meaningful conversations that deepened our friendship.

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Paul 1975 Los Angeles Over the decades, we’ve managed to see each other in person nearly every year. Before Margie and I married, Paul spent a year in California and connected with Margie and her parents. He helped us move from Dayton to Los Angeles in 1973, and we

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talked nearly the entire trip. Our conversations have been in person, over the phone, by letter, and now by email. Paul often joined us for dinner or entertainment, like the many years we had tickets to the Hollywood Bowl. He has visited me at my office, where sometimes others wanted to meet my older brother. Whenever my business trips brought me close to where Paul lived, I made sure to see him. The longest stretch we lived nearby was about eighteen years, when he was in Orange County and Margie, Amy, Eric, and I lived in San Gabriel. Paul joined us for many Sunday dinners during that time.

Paul at Dad’s Funeral

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After Margie’s passing and before I met Cheryl, Paul was transferred to St. Louis, Missouri. My daughter Amy was disappointed when I couldn’t maintain the Sunday dinner tradition she’d grown up with, but life was in upheaval, and I couldn’t do it alone. Paul continues to visit when he can, and our long conversations remain a highlight—especially when we break through the surface of daily news and connect on a deeper level. When Patrick unexpectedly passed in autumn 2023, instead of flying directly to Columbus, I flew to Chicago to travel with Paul by car. That decision gave us precious time together. Paul has visited us in Sedona and has embraced some of the healthy lifestyle changes Cheryl and I practice. Patrick and I spent many hours on the phone in his last five years, after his wife Aggie passed. We shared our grief and spiritual journeys—his along the path of Catholicism, mine along a different but parallel path. I’ll discuss my spiritual journey in more detail later. Paul supported Patrick’s desire to serve others, introducing him to the Knights of Columbus. Patrick became enthusiastic about the Knights in his final year. That act, more than any other, shows the brother and friend Paul has always been.

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My sisters, Mary and Theresa, have also shared a meaningful relationship with me as adults. We meet as equals now, since I left home at an early age. I deeply respect and enjoy them—they are both amazing women.

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My Life with Cats

The first cat to enter my life came in my late thirties. My first wife,

Margie,

wanted

cat

after

moved

into

mother-in-law’s house. Before 1979, we had lived in apartments where pets were not allowed, so it hadn’t been an option until then. At the time, a co-worker and friend of mine had several cats, but one in particular — a Siamese — was causing problems in their household. When I mentioned this to Margie, she was thrilled. We agreed to adopt the Siamese, pending approval. My friend and his wife visited our house to see if we’d be good cat parents, and we also visited their home to meet the cat. After several days, they told us to prepare for the adoption. The next morning, I arrived at their home with a brand-new cat carrier, ready to bring our new family member home. I waited downstairs for quite a while. Eventually, my friend came down and explained that his wife had had a long “conversation” with

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the cat — and that they had decided the Siamese would stay and learn to tolerate the other cats in their household. The adoption was off. I was torn. We had prepared everything, and I had no way to contact Margie during the day. I didn’t want to go home empty-handed. So, I drove to the local animal shelter. I was shown many cats, but one in particular — a black female — stood out. She paid attention to me. We brought her home and named her Purrcilla.

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1980 Margie and Purrcilla

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Purrcilla lived with us for at least seven years, including our move to the house we bought just before our daughter Amy was born. She was an indoor-outdoor cat with a sweet disposition. She loved to curl up next to my computer monitor for warmth. I soon discovered that I was allergic to cats and had to learn to manage my distance and symptoms. Purrcilla passed away just before our son Eric was born, about four years after Amy. When Eric was about two years old, on a very rainy Valentine’s Day, we had just finished dinner. Eric was sitting in a high chair that had once belonged to Margie as a baby. Our neighbor’s daughter — also our babysitter — stopped by to deliver a Valentine’s card. When we opened the door, she exclaimed, “I didn’t know you had a cat!” To our surprise, a tiny gray furball was under Eric’s high chair, nibbling food off the floor. That little stray kitten, whom we named Whitefeet, became part of our family. Whitefeet was with us for about 11 years. She was a wonderful companion for our children. When she passed, we buried her in a deep hole in the backyard — a hole Eric had already been digging. That spot later became Margie’s butterfly garden. For a short time, we also had a dog named Whimpers, who had been mysteriously placed in our yard. Whimpers was not a good fit for our family, and after some time, I found him a happy

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home elsewhere. At that point in my life, I wasn’t sure what role pets were supposed to play in my life. They came, they left, and we grieved. I still don’t fully understand the deeper purpose animals can have in our lives. That understanding came later. Margie passed away in May 2012. I met Cheryl in June of the same year. Cheryl came with six cats. Three were primarily indoor cats: Scruff, Opie, and Beepers. The other three were outdoor

cats,

along

with

occasional

neighborhood.

Opie and Beeper

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visitors

from

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Scruff Cheryl lived about three miles from me, and we quickly became close. I continued working remotely from my home, while my son Eric also moved back in. Cheryl’s business was run out of her home, and her cats had a favorite employee they spent their days with. Later, when Cheryl moved the business to a nearby office, the cats had to adjust. I began spending most evenings at Cheryl’s house. That’s when I discovered — or rather confirmed — that I was highly allergic to cats. But I didn’t tell Cheryl. I managed the symptoms quietly with over-the-counter medication. The cats were indifferent to me, and I returned the favor. Cheryl and I became inseparable. We married in 2015. Over time, the outdoor cats disappeared, likely due to coyotes. Later, the indoor cats began to pass away, one by one, as Cheryl was pursuing training as a health coach. Beepers was the last to go,

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and Cheryl grieved deeply.

Cheryl saying goodbye to Beeper After Beepers passed, I finally told Cheryl that I had been taking allergy medications for years to live peacefully with her cats. We both assumed our life with cats had come to an end. Around that time, I retired, sold my home, and we began searching for a second home in Sedona, Arizona. While Cheryl’s home was being remodeled, we lived full-time in Sedona. It was then that I came to a new realization: animals and nature are essential to my spiritual growth and overall well-being. Cheryl became friends with Suzanne Thibault, an author and animal intuitive. After Cheryl read Suzanne’s book, I decided to read it too. I was fascinated by the idea that dogs and cats could be spiritual companions, almost like angels sent into our lives to guide us. At the same time, Cheryl was researching how to raise healthy pets. I began to wonder if there were any hypoallergenic cats. At

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that time, I found seven breeds; today, there are at least fifteen recognized breeds. Since we anticipated traveling with our cats, we decided to get kittens that we could train early to be comfortable in the car. I asked Cheryl what gender and coloring she preferred, and in April 2020, I started a Petfinder search. Two months later, we adopted two kittens: Snap and Crackle, short-haired oriental ginger males.

Snap and Crackle going to their forever home They’ve filled our lives with joy and love ever since. Snap is a young soul — curious and playful. Crackle is an old soul — wise and calm. They are inseparable. We talk to them when we know we’ll be away, and we’ve developed a strong mutual respect. Through our relationship with them, Cheryl and I have deepened our ability to connect — not just with animals, but

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with each other and with the natural world. From my cats, I have learned curiosity, playfulness, love, and relaxation. They have been more than pets — they’ve been teachers.

Snap, Crackle, and Cheryl

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My Spiritual Journey

From Rome to the Tao I was raised Roman Catholic by devout parents, and that foundation shaped the first forty years of my life. In eighth grade, I believed I had a calling to become a priest. That conviction led me to a Minor Seminary high school run by the Servite Order — the American Province of the Order of Servants of Mary. During those years, I immersed myself in Catholic teaching, especially the Church’s emphasis on Social Justice. For me, the core message of the faith was simple and powerful: Live a life of service to others. This message echoed the values I had learned at home. At the end of my first year, I briefly questioned whether I should return for tenth grade. Then I had a vision — a floating, multidimensional gem hovering over the altar. I took this as a

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sign and stayed. Through those remaining high school years, I came to understand Catholicism not only as a personal faith but also as a historic institution — one deeply connected to Christian identity. Yet I also began to see that a spiritual journey could take many forms. Later, during my service in the Marine Corps, I was appointed as a Chaplain’s Assistant and worked with religious leaders from many faiths. That experience opened my eyes even more to the multiplicity of spiritual paths. Still, at that time, I remained committed to becoming a priest, which is one reason I chose to attend the University of Dayton. While in the service, I noticed something striking: many of my fellow Marines didn’t seem to know much about their religion — and most kept their spiritual side well hidden. That atmosphere made it difficult even for me to stay aligned with the path I felt drawn to. At university, I recommitted myself to Catholicism, though I briefly veered toward a more extreme Pentecostal expression. I was fortunate to have Margie there to help ground me. I found myself living my beliefs quietly rather than preaching them.

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In 1973, when Margie and I moved to Los Angeles, we began attending the USC Newman Center, which was staffed by the Servites. Within a year, we began moving into different apartments in Los Angeles and did not return to the Newman Center until 1979, when we moved in with my recently widowed mother-in-law. My spirituality was renewed. But I also began to notice that many diocesan priests in the surrounding parishes lacked the social justice orientation I felt was essential. When we moved to San Gabriel in 1984, I found this disconnect even more pronounced. That was the beginning of my separation from the institutional Roman Catholic Church. For nearly twenty years after that, I continued to live a life of service — but I did so outside of any religious or spiritual framework. I wasn’t hostile. I simply no longer felt called to participate in organized religion. At my high school’s 40th reunion, I was reminded of something important. I had kept a low profile in school, and yet, like me, everyone

had

followed

their

own

path.

That

gave

comfort—and reminded me that spiritual journeys are uniquely individual. The Turn Toward the Tao

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Around the age of seventy — three years after Margie passed away and one year after marrying Cheryl, I found myself unexpectedly drawn to a new spiritual path rooted in a Korean form of Taoism. This form of Taoism weaves together body, mind, and spirit through a practice known as Brain Education. I had never been introduced to this trinity of oneness in such a way before. It brought my life into focus — not overnight, but gradually, and I’m still learning. Some of the physical elements remain a challenge. Looking back, I see that my Catholic formation emphasized mind and spirit but often neglected the body — or viewed it in a mostly negative light. Then came thirty years of coasting, living through service and values, but without structured spiritual practice. After Margie’s death, I felt a profound sense of emptiness. I instinctively sought a community, but the ones I had known often required conformity in speech and thought — something that no longer fit. Ironically, it was in my work life that I found the freedom to contribute authentically — and I was fulfilled more by my efforts than by external praise. Now, having immersed myself in Taoist practice through the Sedona Mago Tao Fellowship, I’ve begun to understand success

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differently. In Taoism, success is measured by how well one lives with compassion, moderation, and humility. https://sedonamagoretreat.org/ Perhaps most importantly, I have learned to live in the Now. Living in the Now This principle has transformed how I experience life. To “Live in the Now” means: I exist in this moment. I am not facing any obstacle right now. I have infinite choices before me. The benefits are profound: I am no longer burdened by the past. I return to a neutral point. I realize I am a creator of each moment. As a mathematician, I’m struck by how this echoes the principles of quantum physics — the awe, the mystery, and the infinite potential of the present. Faith and Fulfillment Today, I have faith in myself. I feel connected to the divine, and I recognize that the divine is within me. My journey continues.

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I am grateful for all the people I’ve known, for every twist and turn of the path, and for all the experiences that shaped me. The story I tell myself — and believe — is this: I am fulfilled and grateful for all I experience, regardless of a specific time frame. I am responsible for fulfilling my life’s purpose and my connection to the divine. I am also grateful for what I learn from others who are on their own life’s journey. When Pope Francis became the head of the Roman Catholic Church, I was asked what I thought. My comment at the time was, “Let’s see who the Cardinals are that he appoints.” I can connect with Pope Leo. First, I know people who were his classmates or teachers at the Catholic Theological Union. The messages I have heard from him have awakened my hope that the Catholic Church will more deeply adopt the Social Justice Message that I was taught.

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My art and creativity

This morning, as I worked on a new hook rug, I found myself reflecting on art — and how creativity has expressed itself in my life over the years. Though I’m a mathematician by training, I’ve always had a deep appreciation for things many might not consider artistic. Currently, I design and create hook rugs—each one starting as a blank canvas. There’s something deeply satisfying about the process. It’s not just about making something pretty. It’s a problem to solve: how do I express meaning, emotion, and structure using only yarn, color, and texture? To most, art and mathematics seem like opposites. But to me, they’ve always been closely related. Math is full of structure, symmetry, balance, and beauty — just like art. Take fractals, for example: simple mathematical rules repeated over and over, producing complex, often breathtaking images. In fact, it can be hard to distinguish some computer-generated fractals from

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actual photographs of mountain ranges. The universe appears to be built similarly—with small, repeating patterns evolving into increasingly complex structures. So yes, there’s deep art in mathematics, and deep mathematics in art. Not long ago, my wife Cheryl and I attended a party in Sedona for local creatives. Each person was asked to bring a guest and share some creative work. Our friend, a flower grower, brought us along. At first, Cheryl and I weren’t sure what to bring. Then I thought, “Why not bring the two rugs I’ve been working on?” Cheryl brought a piece of her writing and a beautiful piece of jewelry she’d made. I displayed my rugs proudly. One was a Tree of Life design; the other, which I call Heaven on Earth, depicts a stylized sun, a heart-shaped Earth, and three people in between—symbolizing harmony between humanity, the planet, and something greater. Most people responded positively, admiring the textures, softness, and colors. But one comment stuck with me: a man, knowing

nothing

about

me,

dismissed

rug-making

“paint-by-numbers.” At first, I shrugged it off, but the comment lingered. It made me realize how many people don’t understand the creativity involved in both mathematics and art. The rug I’m currently working on was actually designed in Excel, which might sound unusual. Excel lets me color-code cells and

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adjust their shape to match the grid of my canvas—much like pixel art. I create a grid representing each square of the rug, then fill the cells using color codes to map the pattern. That process may sound technical—and it is. But creativity lives in constraint. I work with a limited palette of just 81 yarn colors. Most digital images—like those on your phone—have access to tens

thousands

shades.

must

translate

vibrant,

high-resolution images into simplified, abstract versions using only a limited palette of colors. To do this, I rely on mathematical algorithms—specifically, color distance formulas. Each color in a digital image is defined by three numbers: red, green, and blue (each ranging from 0 to 255). I use basic geometry—the distance formula—to match each pixel to the closest available yarn color in my palette. It’s a challenge of optimization, reduction, and visual judgment. In a way, I’m a visual translator. The largest rug I’ve made is about nine feet long and three feet wide, and it hangs on the wall in my office. But my rugs aren’t just about size or complexity—they’re deeply personal. Many were inspired by life particle cards—symbolic tools used for channeling healing energy and intention. Over the past 14 years, I’ve made over 50 rugs—possibly closer to 100. Until that Friday’s gathering, I’d only ever shared them with the people to

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whom I was giving them. Some of the most fulfilling moments in my creative life have happened not in galleries or studios, but in quiet, personal spaces. I recall taking several rugs with me on a 89-day cruise that I wrote about elsewhere. I needed something to do with my hands during the long voyage, and rug-making became my companion. I even stopped in Singapore midway through to restock supplies. Each day, I joined needlepoint groups in the mornings and knitters and crocheters in the afternoons. I was the only man among them, but I was welcomed all the same. On that trip, I probably completed ten or more pieces, depending on their complexity. Each rug takes roughly 80 hours to complete, with an additional 10 hours for binding. That’s a lot of yarn, a lot of time, and a lot of thought. And yet, for me, the process is never tedious. It’s meditative, problem-solving, storytelling. Every piece has meaning. Every rug has a voice. So yes, maybe it does resemble “paint-by-numbers” in some ways—just as a sonnet follows strict rules or a jazz solo builds on a scale. But creativity lies in what you do within those boundaries—and in how you choose to share it.

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After the initial dismissive comment at the Sedona gathering, many people approached me—curious, intrigued. They touched the yarn, asked questions, and listened as I explained how the Heaven on Earth rug was inspired by spiritual symbolism and love for our planet. Some said, “This feels amazing.” Others wanted to understand how it was made.

Heaven on Earth

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That was the moment I realized something I’d been missing in my creative process all these years: the importance of sharing. Art isn’t just about creating. It’s about connection. To

me,

art

and

creativity

are

about

actively

using

media—whether yarn, numbers, symbols, spreadsheets, or stories—to express something meaningful, and then having the courage to share it with others. This chapter of my life has taught me that being creative doesn’t always mean being immediately understood. But it does mean trusting the process, embracing the blend of logic and emotion, and staying open to surprise, learning, and the possibility that beauty can be found in the most unexpected intersections. Even between mathematics and yarn.

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Thinking Outside the Box

My career has been built on one fundamental principle: thinking outside the box. As a teenager, I dreamed of being the first priest on the moon. In this chapter, I want to reflect on what motivated me in the jobs I took on, how I approached the work, and why “thinking outside the box” became more than just a catchy phrase—it became my way of solving problems. Let me explain what I mean. Most people, when faced with a challenge, instinctively reach for the tools they are most familiar with. A carpenter, asked to hang a picture, will grab a hammer and nail. A plumber, without a hammer, might improvise with a wrench. That’s inside-the-box thinking — not wrong, just conventional. It relies on familiar tools and well-worn methods. For many problems, this approach works just fine.

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But the problems I was usually called on to solve didn’t lend themselves to standard solutions. More often than not, the issue wasn’t just complicated — it was misunderstood at its core. It required a different way of seeing. As a mathematician, I couldn’t always count on others understanding the mathematical frameworks I was using — which meant I had to understand them first: their jobs, their language, their instincts. Only then could I translate what I knew into something actionable and relevant. Here’s a good example: At one point, I was asked to help develop a triage system for treating burn victims upon arrival at a hospital. This was critical in mass-casualty scenarios where quick, informed decisions could mean the difference between life and death. Previous teams had attempted to use standard statistical tools, but their models weren’t working. They knew my colleagues and I had developed methods for analyzing complex data differently, so they asked us to take a look. We delved into the data — burn severity, body surface area affected, and time to hospital arrival. Our analysis yielded a surprising result: the longer it took someone to reach the hospital, the better their chances of survival.

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That made no biological sense. So I stepped back and asked a simple but critical question: “Did you include data on the people who didn’t make it to the hospital?” The answer: No. Once we removed the time-to-arrival variable, which was skewed because it only included survivors, the revised model behaved

expected.

This

was

textbook

case

misunderstanding the very dimensions of the box itself. We weren’t just solving the wrong problem — we were working with the wrong assumptions. Throughout my career, people often handed me too much data or the wrong kind of data. My job wasn’t just to analyze it — it was to mine it for meaning. We eventually began referring to this as data mining, and the tools developed in the 1980s and 1990s now form the foundation of what is now known as artificial intelligence. But there’s a catch. If you don’t understand the boundaries of your problem — the assumptions, biases, and data gaps — then AI doesn’t give you intelligent answers. It gives you what I call artificial stupidity (AS) instead of AI.

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Another example: Walmart once approached us for help understanding their store-level sales data. They wanted to test our methods, so they gave us data from a few locations in Arkansas. We found something odd — one store was selling a surprising volume of Mexican fast food. Their response? “Impossible. This is deep-red Arkansas. There’s no significant Mexican population here.” But the data said otherwise. So we asked more questions and eventually learned there was a Tyson chicken processing plant just down the road. The plant employed many Mexican workers. Suddenly, everything made sense. The data wasn’t wrong — it was just misunderstood. Today’s AI systems work on a similar principle. Every time you visit a website and accept cookies, you’re tagged with a unique identifier. That tag collects behavioral data — what you search for, click on, and how long you stay on each page. When combined with demographic information — such as age, gender, and education — you become part of a group. That group behavior informs the content, ads, and recommendations you receive.

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It all traces back to the kinds of algorithms we built years ago — only now operating at scale with immense computing power. At its core, my work was about this: extracting meaning from data — then using that meaning to build something usable. Not just theoretically elegant, but implementable. That was always the challenge with traditional statistical methods. Many tools developed decades ago were brilliant — but they weren’t built with modern computing in mind. They required enormous manual effort or complex environments that didn’t translate well to databases or real-time systems. I saw this time and again. A statistician would spend a year crafting a beautifully intricate model — only to discover no one in programming could implement it in production. So I learned to use tools I could actually apply. I wasn’t interested in academic elegance for its own sake. I wanted results that made sense and could be put into action — even if they came from a completely different way of thinking. That’s what it means to think outside the box. It means stepping back from the problem, questioning your assumptions, ignoring the “usual” path when it’s clearly not working — and finding a new way forward.

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In many ways, that mindset defined my career. I lived in the space between disciplines — between data and intuition, between theoretical math and real-world decisions. And I learned that sometimes, the best solution isn’t the most clever — it’s the one that gets the job done right now.

I plan to write a book called “Data Mindfulness” which will dive deeply into this issue.

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Places That Stayed with Me

Places That Stayed With Me I’ve been fortunate enough to travel widely — to over 50 countries and all but one of the 50 U.S. states. With that kind of travel, you begin to collect beauty like others collect souvenirs — storing it not just in photos, but in your memory, where it stays alive in color, in texture, in feeling. One of the most striking places I’ve ever seen was in Ghana, on the coast of West Africa. I was on a bus with other tourists from a cruise, and we stopped at a scenic overlook. Most people stayed inside, including the photographer in our group — he just needed a break. But I stepped out and wandered over to the edge. What I saw took my breath away. It was a palette of colors — cliffs painted by time and earth, stretching above the sea but separated from it by a long, low flat of land. It reminded me of

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the Painted Desert or some places in Death Valley, but even more vivid — more alive. The colors seemed to glow from within the earth itself.

I rushed back to the bus and convinced the photographer to take a look. He did — and the photo he captured was eventually published in the cruise line’s commemorative magazine. That moment felt like confirmation: sometimes beauty is waiting just outside the frame, if you’re willing to look for it. In contrast, one of the most moving experiences my son Eric had came in a place far more local: the Hoosier National Forest in Indiana. He didn’t take a marked trail or join a tour. He found a remote, forested area using Google Earth, drove out, parked his car, and just started walking into the trees.

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He ended up in a place called Yellowwood, part of the Morgan-Monroe State Forest. The trees there were coated in lichen — not just gray or green, but yellow, bright yellow, glowing through the fog like old embers. It gave the forest an otherworldly feel, as if it were glowing from within. That yellow lichen grows slowly — less than a centimeter a year — which means those trees had been wearing their golden coats for decades, maybe a century. There were no crowds. No signs. Just one turkey hunter, who said he never saw anyone else out there. Sometimes, the most stunning natural beauty isn’t found in national parks or on postcards — it’s in the quiet corners of the world, slowly evolving while no one is watching. Of course, I’ve seen many other wonders: The vast stone temples of Angkor Wat, rising from the Cambodian jungle like memories dug out of time. The sun-drenched cliffs of Cinque Terre, or the hidden hillside town of Centara, Italy, with fewer than 300 residents. The buildings of Washington, D.C., the lighthouses of Maine, the raw landscapes of Yellowstone and Death Valley. But it’s not always the grandeur that stays with you.

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Sometimes it’s the texture of a cliff, the glow of lichen, the silence of a jungle, or a foggy trail — and the feeling that, for just a moment, the world is offering you a glimpse of something sacred and rare.

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Why I like math

I mentioned some of the ways math has shaped my life in earlier chapters. One early example stands out: I had to struggle to learn division because I switched schools right before they started teaching multiplication of numbers greater than five. My new school had already covered multiplication, so I was left to teach myself to catch up. I needed multiplication to do long division, so I had no choice — and in the end, I succeeded. That experience — struggling, then overcoming — was my first real victory with math. It taught me not just persistence, but the joy of solving something on my own. That’s something I would return to again and again in my life. Years later, I began to see how math wasn’t just useful—it was everywhere. In the structure of trees, the formation of clouds, the spiral of galaxies — all of it connected by fractals and other mathematical patterns. These patterns exist at every level of nature, right down to our cells and DNA. There’s a kind of hidden

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symmetry to the universe, and math is the language that reveals it. High School Discoveries In high school, I had an interesting algebra teacher. I hadn’t been

exposed

algebraic

thinking

before,

and

was

challenging. Like many students, I struggled with some of the concepts. Today, algebra is taught much earlier, which I think is a good change — but back then, it was like learning a new language in ninth grade. Then I got to geometry, and something clicked. What I loved about geometry was the logic of proofs. You didn’t just plug numbers into a formula — you had to build an argument. You had to prove a theorem or a corollary step by step. There was structure, rigor, and — to me — elegance. Geometry showed me that math wasn’t just useful, it was beautiful. Sadly, most geometry classes today skip over the proofs and focus only on practical applications. But those proofs were what made the subject come alive for me. My First Real Math Project At the end of each school year, we held track and field events on the school grounds. Our property in Hillside was large — about a full city block — and in my freshman year, I noticed something

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strange. The running track was laid out through orchards and across open fields in a confusing route. It looked more like a cross-country course than a proper track. Thanks to what I’d learned in geometry, I asked the physical education teacher if I could design a standard quarter-mile track. He agreed. I gathered stakes, string, a chalk line marker, and a measuring wheel, and laid it out — measuring and marking with staggered starts for different events. It worked perfectly. Later, I taught my brothers how to rebuild the track so they could continue the tradition after I graduated. That was the first time I used math to solve a real-world problem—and I loved it. A Math Class in a War Zone While serving in Da Nang, Vietnam, I had the opportunity to take a college algebra class through an education program. The class started with about 25 students. By the second class meeting, only one student remained: me. The instructor, an officer and PhD mathematician, decided to move our classes to his office. He was running the missile battalion for the northern region of South Vietnam, yet he made time to teach me math one-on-one. I not only learned college algebra — I also learned what real mathematicians actually did.

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Until that point, I thought math was just for teachers. But this officer showed me how math was used to solve practical, high-stakes problems. That was the moment I realized: I wanted to make a career out of mathematics. University and Beyond In 1968, I applied to the University of Dayton in Ohio and was accepted into their Mathematical Arts program — the more rigorous track. I initially signed up for a range of liberal arts classes — English, history, philosophy, speech, and German — but I quickly realized I was on the wrong side of the department. So I switched into the math and science track. Because I hadn’t studied trigonometry in high school, I started with pre-calculus. This turned out to be a blessing, as it kept me out of the large introductory calculus lecture halls. Instead, I joined a small cohort of 20 to 30 students in calculus, and we stayed together for a full year and a half of math coursework. At the same time, I took my first programming course, using Fortran. It was the only beginner-level computing course offered, but it opened a new door. Later, I took a course in assembler language for DEC computers. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that programming background would prove critical to my later work in data science and statistical computing.

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By the end of my sophomore year, I discovered that I could minor in both philosophy and English if I scheduled my courses carefully—and I did. I continued to take math and science classes, and I enjoyed nearly all of them. One upper-level math course tripped me up — I hadn’t read the prerequisites closely enough — but that too was part of the learning process. Then, in my junior year, everything changed again. I was taking a statistics course, but didn’t yet understand its purpose. Then I attended a career day seminar and listened to a speaker from Procter & Gamble describe his life as a statistician. He discussed working on various projects, solving complex problems, and being the person who could accomplish things no one else could — simply because of his training. That was it for me. That was the job I wanted. The Start of a Career When I graduated with a degree in mathematical statistics, I wanted to pursue graduate studies immediately. But because I finished in the summer, my options were limited. Then I got a call from Wright State University, also in Dayton, offering me a spot in their mathematics graduate program and a teaching assistantship.

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I jumped at the opportunity. I made it clear that my interest was in statistics, and the faculty assured me I would have access to the courses I needed. They followed through — and my real career began. A Lifelong Path What mathematics gave me was a way to solve problems and puzzles — sometimes ones no one else could figure out. Throughout my career, I have worked across seven different disciplinary areas, including public health, real estate, defense, and business analytics, for 13 distinct organizations. In every case, I moved not because of salary or prestige — but because I was drawn to more challenging problems. I’ve worked with brilliant mathematicians and statisticians, but most of the people I collaborated with didn’t have a deep math background. And that was okay. Because most people don’t use math beyond a 7th-grade level in their daily lives, those of us who do become very valuable. I was never short on work. Only about 5% of college graduates go on to work directly in the field they studied, but mathematics is one of the few exceptions. It’s so fundamental, so widely applicable, that it continues to open doors even when the job title says something else.

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Even in retirement, I dream of mathematical problems. I continue to work on projects with a strong mathematical component. Right now, for example, I’m studying quantum physics — a field based heavily on probability theory. Final Thoughts So why do I like math? Because it solves problems. Because it’s beautiful. Because it challenges my brain in a way nothing else does. I love brain teasers, puzzles, and helping people in ways that utilize my unique skills. Math has given me a life of purpose, challenge, and discovery — and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

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Had to use vector arithmetic to design this

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How I learned to ride a bicycle

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John on tricycle 1948 Jersey City I didn’t think much about bicycles until we moved to Carteret, New Jersey, to a house on Arthur Avenue. The neighborhood was full of kids, many of them already flying down the street on two

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wheels. I wanted that freedom — desperately. For my seventh birthday, my parents gave me a bicycle. My father tried to teach me to ride it, training wheels and all. There was just one problem: the bicycle was built for an adult, and I most certainly wasn’t. My legs could barely reach the pedals, much less push with confidence. I tried, wobbling, stretching, and straining, but I wasn’t ready yet. Not long after, we moved again — this time to the suburbs of Chicago, to a development called Country Club Hills. By then, I had grown taller. My father brought out the bicycle, reattached the training wheels, and pointed me toward the backyard. It was an old piece of farmland, a quarter acre of uneven ground. I rode in circles over the bumps and ruts, the bicycle rattling beneath me like some stubborn creature refusing to be tamed. Eventually, the day came when the training wheels came off. I don’t remember the exact moment I mastered balance — only the sudden realization that I was gliding forward under my own power. I didn’t ride in the street much; the roads around our house were rural and busy, and Cicero Avenue was far too dangerous. But the backyard was enough. It felt like a whole world then. When we moved to Columbus, Ohio, just before eighth grade, the bicycle finally became what I had always hoped it would be: my

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independence. I rode everywhere — to school, to the library, through the neighborhoods, discovering new corners of the city on my own terms. Columbus was flat, which made riding easy. The bicycle became my way of growing up, one mile at a time. I made weekly trips to the Whitehall library, sometimes with my brothers, sometimes alone. And of course, I had my share of mishaps. Once, turning onto a familiar street, I crashed straight into a parked car. The collision bent the bicycle’s fork so badly that I had to reverse it just to keep riding. Another time — I believe it was the summer before seminary — I misread a car’s left turn signal while trying to cross a busy street. I thought the driver was turning before reaching me. Instead, they continued forward. I went up and over their hood. Luckily, they were going slowly. I landed shaken but unhurt, and the bicycle survived intact. I might have kept the accident secret, but Columbus was not as big a city as it seemed. My mother confronted me almost immediately; the people who had hit me turned out to know someone from our church. Word travels quickly when you wish it wouldn’t Later, when Margie and I lived in Los Angeles with only one car, I returned to bicycling. I bought a simple bike and rode the four miles from Wilshire and Western to the health department

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where I worked. It was especially useful during a month-long bus strike; the bicycle kept my life moving when the city had ground to a halt. But I also learned an important truth: most drivers do not respect

cyclists.

Riding

Los

Angeles

traffic

became

increasingly unsafe. Eventually, I gave up the bicycle and sold it to a friend. Years passed before I rode again — not until my children were old enough to want bicycles of their own. I bought one so I could ride with them, pedaling beside their small frames as they learned what freedom felt like. Now, in retirement, the thought of bicycling occasionally crosses my mind. But with a hip that no longer cooperates the way it once did, I doubt I will return to it. Still, the memory remains — the bumps of our backyard farm in Country Club Hills, the wide streets of Columbus, the feeling of being alone on a bicycle for the first time, steering

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The Simple Pleasures

Cooking has always been one of my great joys. With Margie, the kitchen was a shared space, each of us moving easily through the tasks that turned ingredients into a meal. With Cheryl, the rhythm is different — she prefers the kitchen to herself most days. I don’t mind; I still find my way to the stove now and then, especially when the meal is casual. But what truly delights me is preparing the more complex dinners, the ones that stir up the chemist inside me. Holiday meals, especially, allow Cheryl and me to move together in harmony. In those moments, cooking feels less like labor and more like a dance—a choreography of chopping, stirring, and tasting. It is a glorious ritual of creativity and joy, carried through to the eating. Creativity weaves itself through many parts of my life. I find it in the work I do around the house and in the yard, in the patient making of latch-hook rugs, in books that draw me into new worlds or revisit old ideas. I find it in the challenges I welcome

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— those offered to me and those I dream up myself. It’s there in games played for fun, in the quiet companionship of my cats, and most deeply, in the time I share with Cheryl. In recent years, I’ve started noticing something I once overlooked: the glimmers. For so long, my focus had been drawn to the heavy things — the stresses, the uncertainties, the hardness of life. But somewhere along the way, I realized there were sparks tucked into my days. The way sunlight spills across the kitchen table. The way a laugh cuts through the stillness of an afternoon. At first, these moments slipped past almost unnoticed. Then, as I gave them attention, I began to see them everywhere. A glimmer doesn’t shout for your attention. It’s not like pain or worry, which demand to be felt. Glimmers whisper. They arrive quietly — a favorite song on the radio, the smell of coffee drifting in the air, the relief of finally sitting down after a long day. In those moments, my body softens, my mind steadies. It is as if some deeper part of me is saying, You’re okay right now. What I love most about glimmers is their ordinariness. They don’t wait for holidays or milestones. They’re stitched into everyday life — the chipped mug I reach for each morning, the messy kitchen that holds so many good conversations, the warmth of an old blanket. They are imperfect, unpolished, yet

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achingly beautiful because they are real. Many of these glimmers emerge through connection. A smile from a stranger. A hug I didn’t know I needed. A glance from someone who understands without words. These brief, almost fleeting exchanges remind me that I belong to something larger than myself. It isn’t the grand gestures or eloquent speeches that stay with me — it’s these small, human moments. These days, I let the glimmers guide me. Life is still full of challenges; I haven’t escaped the dark times. But I no longer feel as if they swallow me. I hold onto the sparks — the laughter, the warmth, the small beauties — and they carry me through. My story isn’t about avoiding the shadows. It’s about remembering the light that finds its way through them. I’ve also learned to honor my own need for stillness. I am good at being quiet with myself. Too much interaction — endless phone calls, long days in crowded offices — leaves me drained. Solitude is not emptiness for me; it is restoration. It is space to breathe, to notice, to return to myself. And in those quiet spaces, I find the simple pleasures again — a meal, a cat curled at my side, Cheryl’s laughter in the next room, a spark of sunlight through the window—ordinary glimmers, extraordinary in their own way.

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There is a cat at upper right side

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The Games I have Loved

I was born into a family of game players. Both of my parents loved games of all kinds. I remember them playing Parcheesi most clearly, and I’ve heard the story many times of how their shared love of games was one of the things that drew them together before they were married. Games, for them, were a way of bonding, of spending time together with purpose and pleasure. As a child, games were simply part of life. I learned Monopoly early and eventually taught myself chess, then brought my brothers along. We played checkers, Sorry (which always felt like Parcheesi’s lively cousin), and a steady stream of new games that

appeared

basketball,

through

baseball,

and

the

1950s.

football

Outdoors,

with

the

played

neighborhood

kids—games that were as much about movement and laughter as they were about rules and scores.

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By high school, my games changed shape. I played shuffleboard and pool, and I took up handball. When I joined the Marine Corps, chess stayed with me in a new way: by mail. I don’t remember how many correspondence games I played, only that the rhythm of writing a move, waiting, and imagining the board suited the pace of that time in my life. In college, I briefly joined the chess club, but life quickly grew too full. Margie and I played card games together—many of them. I bought a Book of Hoyle and worked my way through it, choosing whatever looked interesting. We played backgammon, too. But the game we played most often was Scrabble. We approached it differently. Margie delighted in finding the most complex, elegant words. I aimed for points. We weren’t particularly competitive with each other; we were just differently motivated. It’s worth admitting that, before Margie and I married, I played to win—to the blood, as I like to say. Winning mattered to me. Marriage softened that edge. When we visited my parents, whether alone or with our children, a game almost always emerged. With our kids, we played Uno and Mille Bornes, the French driving game. Games became family rituals rather than contests to conquer.

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Cheryl and I don’t play many games together, but games have never really left my life. Computers arrived early for me. I remember buying a Pong console and playing it on the television. As computers became my professional world, games followed naturally. In the 1970s, I played Moon Lander, trying to calculate the perfect descent, and Star Wars, and Adventure, a text-based game whose phrases still echo in some of my passwords. On early PCs, I played Minesweeper and The Bard’s Tale. Later came Horde, an economics-heavy game that helped me realize something important: many role-playing games are, at heart, economic systems disguised as fantasy. As machines grew more powerful, I played Prince of Persia—and then figured out how to hack it by editing binary files. Understanding how a game works has always been as interesting to me as playing it. For a long time, The Bard’s Tale was my favorite. Characters I created there later appeared in multiplayer games. I’ve played The Lord of the Rings Online since its beginning—nearly two decades now—and spent time in World of Warcraft as well. Along the way, I learned an important lesson: games can be addictive. It’s easy to let them crowd out family, work, and balance. I had to learn moderation. I remember calling tech support once and hearing Wolfenstein music in the background—it told you everything you needed to know about what was really happening in that call center.

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Lord of the Rings Online If I’m honest, my deepest gaming love isn’t gaming at all. It’s puzzles. I’ve completed hundreds—small ones, enormous ones, and everything in between. I once tackled a 20,000-piece puzzle that took three months to finish. Finding space for it was the real challenge; I commandeered a long dining room table at my in-laws’ house. The puzzle disappointed me a little because its pattern repeated, making it possible to deduce pieces by position rather than discovery. Still, finishing it was satisfying. I’ve never been one to glue puzzles and frame them. Christmas puzzles with the kids came out year after year, assembled and

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disassembled as part of the season. When I want to preserve a puzzle now, I slide wax paper between sections, put it back in the box, and hope no one shakes it. I’ve also written games. My first was tic-tac-toe. I wrote a maze generator. More recently, I created a Sudoku solver that can crack nearly any puzzle without guessing and offers smart suggestions when guesses are required. It has solved even the hardest online Sudokus I’ve thrown at it. Over time, I’ve realized that life itself shares much with games. There are strategies, motivations, rules we agree to follow, and temptations to cheat. I learned early that while taking a game apart to understand it can be rewarding, cheating at it strips away the challenge—and the joy. Honesty, whether in games or life, keeps things worth playing. Today, one of my favorite pleasures is playing chess with my grandchildren. I suspect I’ll keep playing games, solving puzzles, and exploring systems for as long as I’m able. Games have always been more than entertainment for me. They are how I think, how I learn, and how I connect—across generations, across time, and across the many chapters of my life.

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Advice for the Journey

Advice for the Journey One of the great things about giving advice is that I’m not responsible for how anyone responds to it. I also recognize that if my younger self had heard this advice, he might not have had the experience needed to make it useful. So, I’ll begin with a parable: The Parable of the Sage’s Cave A young seeker decides to climb a mountain in search of an old sage who lives alone in a cave. The journey takes many days, fraught with dangers that must be overcome or avoided. Finally, the seeker arrives, eager to receive wisdom. The sage says, “I am busy now. While you wait, clean my cave, prepare food for me, and wait silently until I speak to you.”

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The seeker eagerly agrees but quickly realizes he has never learned how to clean, find, or prepare food. So, the seeker spends months learning these tasks while the sage sits, barely acknowledging him. Eventually, the seeker becomes excellent at these chores and decides to leave, presenting a gift to the sage on the way out. At that moment, the sage asks, “What can I do for you?” The seeker begins to explain why he came, but in speaking, he realizes he has already found the answer: he sought purpose and has excelled in fulfilling it. The Heart of My Advice This parable captures the essence of what I want to share. We are responsible for our own lives and purposes, which change throughout our many stages. Survival: The Young Years When we are young, survival is our primary purpose. We learn to navigate the world and build skills to meet our basic needs. Many of these habits become ingrained, influencing the rest of our lives — not always for the better. The elders in our environment pass down a mix of conscious and unconscious habits. We owe them gratitude for helping us

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survive. Adolescence: Becoming Ourselves Adolescence is a confusing time because we open ourselves to many new influences. Our purpose during these years is to become ourselves. You face challenges that can be difficult. You may love learning a subject but fear failing at it. The key is to realize you are not just an observer but a creator in your learning journey. Creating fills you with love, understanding, and compassion — for yourself and others. At the same time, the pressure to conform to ever-shifting peer norms can cause anxiety and embarrassment. Here, your choice is to acknowledge your uniqueness beyond physical appearance. Breathe in your truth and let self-love guide your actions. Mistakes

are

inevitable

the

path

knowledge.

Forgiveness—both of yourself and others—does not excuse errors but frees you from carrying their weight. One of the greatest joys of adolescence is discovering the rich diversity of humanity. Everyone is a unique expression of love; embrace differences as a source of enrichment and growth. Build habits that support your body, mind, and spirit. Finding Purpose: Transition to Adulthood

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As you move beyond adolescence, the next task is to find your purpose and companions who appreciate it. You have numerous choices, and your purpose is likely to evolve. Your life’s path is yours to create and follow. The key to recognizing your true purpose now is self-love—not selfishness, but genuine appreciation for your unique soul. Take moments of gratitude for the little things and the joy you bring to the world. From time to time, look into your own eyes and truly see the beautiful soul reflected back. You are more powerful than you have been led to believe. Notice the whispers of fear that tell you otherwise—these are limiting beliefs and illusions that mask your brilliance. Challenge them. There are many tools to overcome limiting beliefs; for me, Taoist philosophy has been a helpful guide. Passing It On Eventually, you may find yourself passing this advice to younger generations.

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Remember that everyone has been where you are and carries survival habits from their youth. Cultivate these skills in those you mentor with respect, compassion, and gratitude. Lead by example and allow time for habits that nurture a healthy body, mind, and spirit to develop. Be mindful not to project your own youthful struggles onto those you are helping or the others working with them.

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Living With Purpose in Later Life In life’s final stages, living with purpose remains vital. Your purpose may take many forms. I find it helpful to visualize what I want, sense how it resonates, then take action to fulfill it.

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When challenges arise, face them with love and gratitude. Looking back, I see that challenges are often opportunities disguised, helping me find or fulfill my purpose. I want to live—and die—without regrets or unexpressed love and appreciation. I’ll close with a phrase from the movie Galaxy Quest: “Never give up, never surrender.”

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Talking About Glimmers

It was in January of 2025 that Cheryl introduced me to the idea of a glimmer. At first, I thought of a glimmer as something extraordinary — a sudden, unexpected spark of beauty that caught my eye and made me pause. I described it to people as seeing a butterfly on a winter day — something you wouldn’t expect, something that feels like a small miracle. But as time went on, I began to see that glimmers are all around us. Living in Arizona, I wake up to sunrises that paint the sky in pinks and golds, to rainbows that appear when the sunlight catches the rain just right, and to sunsets that spill color across the desert horizon. Those are glimmers, of course — the easy kind to recognize. But there are quieter ones, too: a cat rolling over to offer its belly for a scratch, a fleeting smile at my own reflection, or the sudden warmth that comes when a memory — something tender from long ago—floats back into my mind.

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Even writing these words is a kind of glimmer. I had wanted to write for some time, but I didn’t know what to say or where to begin. Yet, as I sit here reflecting, the memories themselves become the sparks I was waiting for. One glimmer that has stayed with me for decades comes from my time in Vietnam. I remember sitting in a small bathroom — a simple structure with a tin roof — when I noticed a beam of sunlight coming through a hole in the ceiling. As I watched, I realized part of the light had gone missing, replaced by shadow. Only then did I understand: I was witnessing a partial eclipse. No one had told us it was happening that day, but there it was — quiet, cosmic, and strangely intimate. That moment, that unexpected encounter with wonder, has never left me. There were glimmers in my school days, too. My Latin teacher once gave us a puzzle that looked like Latin but wasn’t. It was a clever arrangement of letters that revealed an English phrase once you solved it. I can still feel the delight of that discovery — the sense that meaning can hide in plain sight. And then there were the jokes — the small, good-humored ones my teachers told, especially Father Gaydos, who taught me geometry and biology in my sophomore year. Many years later, I visited him in his nineties and reminded him of those old jokes. He laughed as if hearing them for the first time — and that, too, was a

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glimmer: the circle closing, the shared laughter echoing across time. As I’ve learned to notice glimmers, I’ve also learned to share them. I’ll often run down the hall to tell Cheryl, “I just had a glimmer!” and we’ll talk about it, savor it, turn it over like a stone in the light. Each time, I feel joy — not just in what I’ve noticed, but in the act of seeing itself. It reminds me that life is happening now — not in the past, not in some imagined future, but here, in the present moment. Looking back, I can see glimmers in memories I didn’t recognize at the time. I remember Margie — my late wife — stepping out of her therapist’s office after her final session. She told me she saw a swarm of butterflies rise into the air. I wasn’t there to see it, but her description stayed with me. It was a moment filled with meaning for her, and through her words, it became meaningful for me, too. Sometimes I think glimmers are more than coincidences. They can feel like messages — gentle reminders from somewhere beyond our understanding. Margie’s death was one such moment for me — heavy with sorrow and love, but radiant, too, in the way it shaped me. I still remember talking with her caregiver about how Margie and I first met, right after she passed. Even now, the memory sends chills through me. It was as

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if, in that moment, she was still with us — one final glimmer of connection. Life keeps offering these small gifts if we’re willing to see them: a rose blooming on a winter bush, a sibling’s smile after solving a hard problem, the feeling of joy that comes when you overcome something difficult. Someone once asked Cheryl whether she invented the term “glimmer.” She hadn’t — it came from someone else — but we’ve made it our own. It has become part of our language, a way of noticing and honoring the everyday miracles that fill our lives.I believe that paying attention to glimmers is one way to raise your vibration — to tune yourself toward gratitude and presence. Maybe this reflection itself will be a glimmer for you.

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My Belief in a Higher Power

Belief in a higher power is, to me, an intimate and individual experience. I was raised by two good Catholics who were determined to raise their children in the faith. My earliest years were filled with rituals: going to Mass, saying grace at meals, receiving communion, making confession, and ending the day with prayer. I was taught the Ten Commandments and what it meant to be a “good Catholic,” not just in doctrine but in kindness — in how you treated people who were different from you. As a child, I accepted it all at face value. Believing in God was as natural as breathing. But as the years passed, adolescence brought rebellion, and adulthood brought critical thinking. Slowly, I began to see not only the spiritual dimension of faith, but the human one — the ways people interact, control, influence, and sometimes misuse religious power.

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In the Catholic Church, there is a term, magisterium, meaning “teacher.” From it we get the word magistrate — one who governs. In the long history of the Church, many have used that authority more to govern than to guide, more for power than for faith. Some practices, I came to realize, had little to do with belief in a higher power. By the time I reached my college years, what stayed with me most were not the doctrines, but the social teachings: respect for different races, genders, and ways of living; the insistence that equality should transcend difference. These values sank deep into me. But when I later experienced hypocrisy and failures among those in charge — a gap between what was preached and what was practiced — I left the Church. I felt the leaders were not living the ideals they were entrusted to uphold. Over time, I grew gentler in my judgment. Distance and study gave me perspective. Through the years, I explored many spiritual traditions, especially Taoism. Almost a decade of Taoist study opened a new way of seeing. I came to realize that what I experience as a higher power is not tied to a building or a single religion. It is tied to frequency — not as a metaphor, but as a real expression of life. Sound is frequency. Light is frequency. Vibration is frequency. At the smallest level, science imagines strings vibrating at the

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foundation of matter. Everything, from stars to cells, hums with invisible movement. The entire universe is an enormous, ongoing symphony of vibration. My belief in a higher power lives in that symphony. It is the force that holds things together, the energy that both surrounds us and flows through us. I do not claim to understand it. I do not need to. The universe is far larger than my comprehension; yet I can glimpse it through analogy, curiosity, and attention. To be close to a higher power, I must be close to others — whether I like them or not. Harmony, not agreement, is what matters. Each of us vibrates at our own frequency. Some harmonize easily with me, others never will. But all are part of the same music. The best I can do is recognize their presence, accept them, applaud the beauty of their difference, and learn from both the dissonance and the harmony. When I reach that point of harmony — when my inner life hums in sync with the world around me — I feel nearest to the higher power I’ve been seeking. It has been a long and twisting journey, and I expect it will continue as long as I live. There is no end to the path. There is only deeper listening. Glimmers, which I spoke of earlier, are part of that listening. They show me the ways I am connected — how my life participates in the frequencies of everything around me. They

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remind me that the sacred is not hidden in some distant realm, but right here: in the present moment, in the ordinary, in the quiet, in the breath and pulse of now. This is my belief in a higher power. Not a doctrine, not a rulebook, but a relationship — a living, vibrating harmony with the world.

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Friends in High School

My high school years were unlike most. I attended a minor seminary run by the Servite Order because, at thirteen, I believed I had a vocation to the priesthood. At fourteen, I left home in Columbus, Ohio, and entered the school in Hillside, Illinois—a small town outside Chicago, three hundred miles from my family. I arrived a day before the other first-year students, so I met the upper-level students first. By the time my classmates came, I had a misplaced confidence that I already “knew the ropes.” It didn’t actually help very much. Our first-year class began with thirty-five boys. By senior year, we were nineteen. Many left during the summers, deciding that seminary life was not for them, and new students would arrive to take their place. By graduation, roughly half of the faces were the same ones who had started with me; the rest were newcomers who had joined along the way.

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My classmates came from everywhere. Many had grown up in Servite parishes. I had not. I first encountered the Servites in second grade, and again in fourth grade, but I didn’t grow up with the traditions the way others did. One of my first friends was from Ohio as well — Pat Kent from Chillicothe, one of the state’s early capitals. Pat stayed all four years. But my closest friend was James Strzelinski. We were both outsiders. We seemed to understand one another, though we didn’t necessarily share all the same interests. Each of us was unique, as boys in seminary often are. As the years passed and the class shrank, friendships shifted. I was friendly with everyone, but only a few friendships lasted beyond school walls. During senior year, I grew close to Rich Meuller, a class below mine. My brothers Patrick and Paul entered the seminary during my junior year. We saw each other from time to time, but we rarely interacted as students. That separation felt normal then. Only years later did it seem strange. At the forty-year reunion in 2004, I realized something new: I had been a loner. I saw it in the conversations, in the photographs,

what

remembered

and

what

others

remembered. I wasn’t sure that was the best choice. The Servites eventually decided I was not a good candidate to continue my studies after high school. They may have been right.

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Life at the Seminary The seminary building was three stories with a basement, built in the 1920s. Dormitories filled the upper floors. The gym hosted many activities, though I wasn’t a sports person. I played intramural games — the kind held on campus — but never anything external. Everyone had jobs. My first was in the barbershop, though the senior students never taught me to cut hair. They did, however, enjoy having me mop floors: the gym, the basement corners, everywhere. That was my first year. Once a year, we had Project Push—a thorough cleaning of every surface. We scrubbed, buffed, and polished. It was a spring ritual as reliable as the seasons.

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Rich Karch as barber As the class grew smaller, we gained students from the Glenmary Society. In junior year, we were moved to a separate dormitory away from first- and second-year students. In my senior year,

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the group was small enough that we were assigned to two-person rooms. I was something of a slob. Eventually, my roommate relocated when space became available, and I found myself alone — a situation that suited me, though I didn’t learn much about tidiness from it. If you saw my office today, you would understand. Study, Meals, and Tunics The study hall was a large room, nearly the size of the gym, with each desk spaced apart. But I did most of my studying in the library. I think I read nearly every book in it. Meals were taken in silence. Someone would read aloud — a religious history book, or sometimes a chapter from Emily Post. Apparently, they did not want to send priests into the world without proper manners. We sat eight to a table. One table rotated duties: serving food and washing dishes. The cooks were Servite brothers from Ireland. That is where I developed my lifelong taste for Irish soda bread. The oddest food was natural peanut butter. The oil floated to the top, so if you weren’t careful, you ended up spreading oil on your bread rather than peanut butter. I didn’t know it was the healthy kind until years later. The meals were good, and they fed us well.

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Clothing was formal at first: white shirt, black tie, black trousers. Midway through the first year, we were allowed to wear the tunic — long, almost to the floor, like a caftan. Underneath, you could wear any long pants you wished. There were heavier tunics for winter and lighter ones for summer. When we became juniors, we were permitted to wear the Servite rosary on our belt, which we made ourselves, and a collar like a priest’s. I remember the sense of pride in that privilege. We were being shaped for something sacred, or so we believed. Classes and Interests The curriculum was classical: four years of Latin, three years of speech. The speech class met once a week. We had art once a week as well. Science classes included biology, chemistry, and physics. I excelled in the sciences and mathematics, though I was asked to step away from advanced math because I wasn’t spending enough time studying. Ironically, mathematics was my strongest subject. In my senior year, I was in charge of the science lab. I kept it clean, maintained the equipment, and did experiments. I loved that space. Perhaps it was the first place where I felt competent and in control. Friendships That Remained

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After high school, I remained close to three people: Richard Karch, who was there for all four years Bruce Klikunas, who became a Servite priest and later served in the same parish where I lived as an adult Pat Kent, my early friend from Ohio Pat and I reconnected at our class reunion. He lost his wife before I lost mine, and we supported each other through grief. I visited him several times when I was in Ohio to visit family, and we are still in correspondence today. Looking back, I see that my friendships were shaped by distance, discipline, and the singular life of a seminary. I didn’t have many close friends. But the few I kept have lasted a lifetime.

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The Most Expensive Thing I Ever Bought

I’ve bought three houses and more cars than I can easily count, but none of them qualify as the most unusual or consequential purchase of my life. That distinction belongs to a computer — one I commissioned in 2001, at a time when personal computers were still evolving rapidly, and few people imagined what they might someday handle. The machine was custom-designed and cost more than $20,000. By any reasonable standard, it was absurd. I maximized everything the technology of the time would allow: memory, disk space, and processing power. Even so, what felt immense then would seem almost quaint now. Storage that once felt limitless would barely register by 2025 standards. At the time, I built the machine to run Microsoft Windows, and I’ll admit it was overkill for anything I was doing personally.

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From the outside, it would have been easy to ask, Why would anyone spend that much money on a computer? I asked myself that question more than once. A few years later, the answer arrived. Around the time I purchased the machine, I left Yahoo and began working for a Massachusetts-based company. After that, I spent a year at Fair Isaac. Then I was asked to take on a role at Information Resources, Inc. (IRI). The job I designed for IRI required computational power far beyond what the company was prepared to provide. Their systems were fully allocated, and there was no budget to build me what I needed. Had I not owned that machine, I would have been stuck. Instead, I rebuilt it — converting it into a Linux system — and suddenly I had exactly the tool the job required. At the time, it was genuinely state-of-the-art. I was handling millions of records, representing millions of consumers, performing analyses at a scale that few desktop systems could manage. It was during that work that I developed a new way of examining consumer behavior — a variation on Market Basket Analysis. The approach revealed patterns in purchasing behavior that hadn’t been visible before. The client was delighted. At the end of my first year at IRI, I received an award recognizing the impact of that work.

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From the company’s perspective, the cost was minimal. They didn’t have to supply a machine. I brought the hardware, the analysis, and the final product. What had once seemed like an extravagant impulse turned out to be an essential investment — one that made the work possible in the first place. Eventually, time caught up with the computer. Advances in technology made it obsolete; far more powerful machines became available for a fraction of the cost. When it finally reached the end of its usefulness, I donated it back to the people who had built it so that it could be passed on to a school. I found out that my analysis technique was later adapted to analyse social media trends and influences. I believe this also led to some of the algorithms used in artificial intelligence. Looking back, I suppose the purchase was an impulse buy. But it was an impulse rooted in curiosity and readiness — the desire to be prepared for challenges I couldn’t yet see. In the end, that machine paid for itself many times over. I don’t regret it at all.

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Healthy Advice

THE 20 PILLARS OF HEALTH: A Comprehensive Guide to Wellness You can control all of these with lifestyle habits. By Cheryl Meyer 1. Ditch the SAD (Standard American Diet) and Stop Eating CRAP (Carbonated, refined, artificial, processed) foods. Support your microbiome. Eat fiber and colorful organic foods to help your gut microbiome thrive. 2. Eat the rainbow of organic whole foods and Clean Meat that Eats its own Specific Diet- Food is code for our body. We need to eat

food

that

supplies

all

the

essential

nutrients

and

phytonutrients that build a strong body from the inside out. Eat from the “farmacy” and reduce the need for the pharmacy down the line, and lower inflammation and chronic disease. 3. If you do eat meat, make it clean meat: Pastured, 100% grass-fed, with no antibiotics or hormones. Eat wild fish. If

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Vegan or vegetarian, avoid veggie junk food; make sure to include non-GMO plant-based protein. Soy must be organic. 4. If it is on the “Dirty Dozen” list, absolutely buy organic. These foods contain dozens of toxins. You cannot wash them off. Avoid them. If the item is on the Clean 15, do not worry. Buy conventional. Buy organic whenever possible. Thank you, EWG, for all of the research. If it’s not on either list, look it up on the USDA

website

“What’s

Food”.

https://www.whatsonmyfood.org/ This site breaks down the toxins on our produce and is an eye-opener. If your item is not on their list, search what is on my food and the name of the food. It is often in their database. Avoid GMOs. They have toxins grown right in the plant food. Whenever possible, buy organic. 5. Cook your own real food. You can control what you put into your body by cooking food and choosing ingredients. Food should not only be delicious, but it should also feed your body all the micronutrients it needs without the chemicals sprayed on conventional crops. And food needs to be free of all the sugar, GMO omega-6 fats, processed salt, and synthetic chemicals from processed foods. Eat all the colors of the rainbow and choose as much diversity as possible. Avoid anything on a label that you can’t pronounce or that you don’t know what it is. Eat real, whole foods from as close to the farm as possible.

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6. Create a strategy for eating outside your home, visiting others’ houses for parties and meals, and eating at restaurants. To go to others’ homes: Take your own food and take a larger container with the same dish to share with other guests. Enjoying community has nothing to do with what you put into your mouth. See the article on how to eat out at restaurants. (See the article in this issue on eating out at restaurants) 7. Detox from the sugar. This is crucial and could cause a withdrawal. Sugar becomes an addiction and interferes with every organ in your body, including your brain. The good news is that it only takes 2-4 weeks to break the addiction, and then you have food freedom. Since it has no food value, your body doesn’t register when you have eaten it. You are still hungry, and you want more. It mucks around with all your hormones, including those that regulate hunger. It impacts every organ in your body and destroys your health. Wean off fructose, cane sugar, corn syrup, and agave in your diet. There are 56 different names for sugar.[i] Also, eliminate “fake sugars”. (The blue, pink, or yellow packets) They are chemicals harmful to your body. Replace them with Stevia, Monk Fruit, occasional small amounts of raw honey, maple syrup, and coconut sugar. These sweeteners can still give you a sugar high, but they also provide your body with some needed nutrients. 8. Avoid unnecessary use of antibiotics or over-the-counter painkillers. They destroy healthy gut bacteria and harm a

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healthy microbiome. 9. Only use Omega-3 oils. Coconut oil, MCT oil, avocado oil, Olive oil (extra virgin, a dark olive color), nut and seed oils. Pastured organic butter, Ghee. Avoid Omega-6 oils that are GMO- corn, soy, canola, safflower, sunflower, and vegetable oils. 10. Never use conventional salt. Use sea salt, Celtic salt, Kosher salt, or Himalayan salt. They provide well-needed minerals. Cooking eliminates the excessive salt in processed foods. 11. Cook with organic garlic, onion, and fresh herbs as much as possible. They have numerous health-giving benefits. They add diversity

and

complexity

your

cooking.

They

add

phytonutrients to your diet. 12. Drink lots of water with a little lemon juice. The rule is 1/2 your body weight in ounces. At least drink 60-70 ounces a day to hydrate your body. Every cell in your body needs water, and most of your body’s functions do too. The lemon is to help make your body more alkaline. Avoid water sold in plastic bottles. They are leaching poisons into your water. Instead, filter your drinking water with a filter under your sink to take out pollutants. Or buy a Brita and filter your water for drinking and cooking. We installed a full home water filtration system. Carry your water in stainless steel bottles. Wash stainless steel bottles daily. 13. Toss the environmental toxins in your home. Stop using toxic cookware—no

cooking

270

coated

cookware.

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Teflon-coated pans away. No, more using cheap black spatulas or spoons. Eliminate plastic wraps and aluminum foil. Cook on enamel or stainless steel; use stainless steel utensils and unbleached parchment paper. Use silicone muffin liners. Store food in glass containers to avoid toxins trickling into your food. Mine have silicone lids. 14. Do stress exercises twice a day to take the top off your stress. We all have stress, but it is important to release it regularly, like the pressure of an instant pot. Do the Andrew Weil 4-7-8 breath[ii], the 5.5 perfect breath, or use a belly button wand mid-morning and mid-afternoon. It’s a 5-minute break that promotes your health. Control your ANTs (Anxious Negative Thoughts). Replace them with thoughts of gratitude. Nourish your inner champion to drown out your inner critic. 15. Stay active. Move. You do not need to run a marathon; walk or move for 30 minutes daily. 16. Spend at least 30 minutes outside enjoying nature. Grounding has become an important concept for health. Get your hands in the dirt. Grow herbs and flowers in your yard or pots. Walk through your neighborhood and appreciate all the beauty around you. Use all your senses when you walk. Get some natural sunlight whenever possible. Get around trees. They emit chemicals that are healthy for us. Optimize your natural light exposure. Get sunlight first thing in the morning if possible. Natural light (via our eyes) signals the body’s master clock,

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which plays a big role in hormone signaling and many other processes. 17. Get at least 7 hours of continuous sleep. Why We Sleep[iii], the book that chronicles a UC Berkeley study on sleep, shows that 7 hours is imperative to health. That last hour is when your brain sweeps the plaque out that causes dementia. 18. Work to make all your relationships healthy and supportive. Toxic relationships negatively impact your health. 19. Build a healthy community. Community is the #1 influence on your health. Stay true to your healthy habits and influence others in your life. Keep old friends, but add new friends with healthier habits into your life. See the article in this issue about CB4Life on the power of community. The Blue Zone project by National Geographic on the healthiest communities in the world considers a healthy community to be #1 for your health. 20. Love yourself- Love yourself enough to practice regular self-care. Love yourself enough to buy and eat organic, cook, move, do stress exercises, get adequate water and sleep, get into nature, control ANTS, foster healthy relationships, surround yourself with a supportive community, and realize being with friends and loved ones has nothing to do with what you feed your body. Control what you eat. Be mindful. Make conscious choices. Practice gratitude and kindness. Laugh often. Love yourself every day.

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Continue to search for the puzzle pieces of your health. Explore Functional

Medicine,

Naturopathic

Medicine,

Holistic

modalities, and Lifestyle changes with a health coach. Stay committed to your path toward health until you realize how great it feels to feel good. The journey to wellness is different for each of us, but the answers are out there. Health is not a destination; it is a journey, and I send you love and light to discover your path.

[i] https://www.virtahealth.com/blog/names-for-sugar

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[ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8fjYPC-k2k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQSZYnUv1mE https://www.bellybuttonhealing.com/ [iii] https://amzn.to/3K0ypMX

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HOLDING ON TO THE ROCKET SHIP-JOHN GINS

From Obsession to Passion

My Taoist teachers say that we each come into life with a purpose, and that it is our responsibility to discover that purpose and live it fully. When we do, both the work and the person are fulfilled. The Taoist word for this state is Chun Hwa—a kind of harmony between what one does and who one is. As I reflect on the stories I’ve written for this memoir, I realize that I understand this idea deeply—not as an abstraction, but as lived experience. Again and again, an idea takes hold of me. At first, it might look like an obsession. I sink my teeth into it, turn it over from every angle, explore it thoroughly, sometimes relentlessly. But over time, I’ve come to see that what others may call obsession is really my way of engaging with passion. When something captures my attention, I give myself to it fully. I study it, test it, question it, and—most importantly—I want to share what I’ve learned. Not to impress, but to help others grow the way I have grown through the process. I can’t pretend that

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every one of these deep dives has led directly to a positive outcome. Some did not. But most of them bore fruit in ways that were not immediately visible. Often, years later, I would realize that something I had once pursued intensely had quietly prepared me for a challenge I couldn’t have anticipated at the time. Once, a manager asked me an unusual question: What would you like to see written on your tombstone? I didn’t know how to answer. Instead, I wrote an obituary. As I did, I realized that what mattered most to me was not what I had achieved, but what I had given—that I had helped others, that my work had made something easier, clearer, or kinder for someone else. I also realized that, while I was a good manager, I was a better Statistician, and this skill was unique in the company. If I had to choose an inscription now, I think it would be simple: He lived with passion. In another exercise, I was asked to write about my personal motto. I never wrote a separate chapter for that, because this—this reflection—is my motto. When I take on a project, I commit myself to it. I try to enjoy the process. I try to learn something new—either for myself or for someone else. In just the past year, I’ve been involved in at least four, possibly five major projects—six, if I include this memoir. I poured myself

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into each one, trying to make it the best it could be. Not all of them appear elsewhere in these pages, but I’ve talked about many of them with Amy and Eric, and they know this pattern of mine well. One of the most important things I’ve learned over time is knowing when to stop. Not every passion needs to be pursued indefinitely. Some projects complete themselves. Others pause, only to be resumed years later. Fulfillment doesn’t always come from continuation; sometimes it comes from completion. One manager noticed that many of my professional roles lasted about four years. He challenged me to stay longer in one position and explained why. With enough time, he said, you gain a deep understanding of the environment—and that depth allows you to contribute in entirely new ways. I took his advice. What followed was a turning point in my career: an opportunity to see data differently, to move beyond reporting into modeling. We didn’t call it that at the time, but it was what later became known as data mining. I wasn’t a precursor exactly—but I was among the first to think in those terms. Later, at Information Resources, Inc., I found myself doing something remarkably similar, again approaching data as something alive, patterned, and meaningful. That pattern—deep engagement followed by unexpected application—has repeated

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itself throughout my life. Now, in this stage of life, I have the great privilege of playing in many different sandboxes. I can be passionate about one thing today and another tomorrow. And it is a profound gift to share my life with Cheryl, who is just as passionate about her own pursuits as I am about mine. We don’t compete for space; we support each other’s explorations. Our passions run alongside one another, sometimes intersecting, always respected. This memoir itself is a passion project—one designed especially for my grandchildren, but also for anyone who may find something useful or comforting in these pages. If there is wisdom

here,

came

not

from

certainty,

but

from

engagement—from caring deeply enough to explore, to fail, to learn, and to try again. As one of my teachers has reminded me, I believe this book will give my progeny a way to understand their roots and be stronger for it. If I can offer anything in return, it is this encouragement: Embrace your own life with gratitude. Follow what draws you with compassion—for yourself and for others. Thank you for reading.

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I am John Dominic Gins, and my soul’s name is Chun Mok, which means Heavenly Tree.

Mago heart tree Timeline of Major Life Events Early Life and Family Roots Late 1940s Born in California, then moved to the northeastern United States, shaped by parents who were shaped by the Second World

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War and by Catholic tradition. Early 1950s Frequent moves, the development of independence, observation, and adaptability mark early childhood. Mid-1950s First exposure to television and wider American culture during a time of racial segregation and social conformity. Late 1950s – Early 1960s Growing

awareness—still

limited—of

race,

religion,

and

difference while attending largely all-white schools. Adolescence and Religious Formation Early 1960s (Age 14) Enters the Servite minor seminary, leaving home at a young age to pursue a possible calling to the priesthood. 1960–1964 Seminary

years

marked

discipline,

intellectual

rigor,

Gregorian chant, early leadership, and spiritual formation. May 1964 Death of Grandmother Dominica (Babci). News withheld until after graduation, resulting in unresolved grief. 1964 Informed that he will not continue toward the priesthood with the Servite community. Military Service and Vietnam 1964–1968

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Enlists in the United States Marine Corps. Trained as an electrician with an engineering battalion, learns practical skills and systems thinking. 1965–1967 Served approximately 25 months in Vietnam, including time as a chaplain’s assistant. Experiences war, responsibility, fear, cultural exchange, and spiritual questioning. 1967 Returns to the United States and completes military service. Education, Marriage, and Early Career Late 1960s Begins college education following military service. 1970 Marries Margie. Early 1970s Completes undergraduate education; continues graduate studies. Develops strong interests in mathematics, statistics, computing, and applied problem-solving. 1970s Begins professional career in data, statistics, and emerging computational fields. Family Life and Professional Growth Early 1980s

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Chooses to become a parent after years of reflection and preparation. 1984 Daughter Amy is born. 1988 Son Eric is born. 1980s–1990s Active involvement in children’s education; early engagement with personal computing and internet literacy. 1990s–2000s Career

spans

multiple

organizations,

with

significant

contributions to data modeling and early data mining concepts. Loss, Transition, and Renewal Late 2000s Margie becomes ill. Early 2010s Death of Margie. Period of grief, reflection, and re-engagement with life. 2012 Meets Cheryl. Relationship develops with intention, honesty, and mutual respect. Later Life, Place, and Practice 2010s–2020s Takes an 89-day cruise through Asia and Africa 2016

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Retirement from full-time professional work at age 70. Moves part-time to Sedona, Arizona; explores Taoism, yoga, energy practices, and contemplative living. 2020s–Present Continued learning, writing, mentoring, and creative projects. Annual ancestor gratitude ceremonies; deepening spiritual integration. 2023 Cheryl sells her Arcadia family home. She and John buy the Rimrock property. 2025 Writing of a memoir as a legacy project for children, grandchildren, and future readers. Ongoing Lifelong practices of reading, singing, curiosity, compassion, and passion-driven inquiry. Continued partnership with Cheryl, supporting each other’s callings. Ongoing reflection on purpose (Chun Hwa), presence, and contribution. Note to the Reader This timeline is not meant to replace the stories, but to support them. The heart of this memoir lies not in dates but in moments—and in what those moments teach.

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Stories and Reﬂections written for his grandchildren. Written as a set of ﬁreside chats. This memoir explores many aspects of the author’s life and interests and was inspired by his grandsons’ questions. The author, John Gins, is the author of Living Life by Accepting Death. He is an award-winning editor. Along with his wife, Cheryl Meyer, he has written Stress, TwoMinute Exercises to Break Up the Day, A Deskbook Guide, and Eating from the Rainbow Cookbook Library. Besides writing books, he has built a labyrinth and creates latch hook rugs.